Bill C-575 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (residence of electors)

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act to allow all Canadian citizens to vote in a federal election, regardless of their place of residence.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you again, Mr. Mayrand, for being here.

I have three very quick questions to start with, before some of the more complex ones.

First of all, the Frank judgment struck down provision 11(d) in the Canada Elections Act, which said that if you've been outside the country and don't intend to return for more than five years, you can't vote, even if you're a Canadian. But when the government introduced Bill C-50, it presented Bill C-50 in an almost polemical way as being necessary to implement the Frank judgment.

Is Bill C-50 necessary for that purpose? The reason I ask is that my colleague from Halifax had Bill C-575 that would remove section 11(d) from the Canada Elections Act. She felt that was all you need to do to conform with the Frank judgment. Is Bill C-50 implementing the Frank judgment?

Citizen Voting Act

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his very interesting speech. He eloquently presented our position on Bill C-50 and the reasons why we are opposed to An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act.

This bill basically deals with the right to vote of Canadians living abroad. This bill is very important because it directly affects one out of three Canadians. Unfortunately, I see that we are debating this bill under a time allocation motion. In fact, it is the 95th time allocation motion that the Conservative government has imposed on the House since 2011. Despite the fact that we have raised a number of concerns with this bill, the government does not want to have this serious debate in the House, which I find disappointing.

I am also disappointed by this government's approach in terms of the bills it has introduced in the House concerning Canadians' right to vote. A few years ago, it introduced Bill C-23, and I was able to voice my concerns about it in the House. It restricted the right to vote of many Canadians, especially marginalized Canadians. In fact, the bill actually prevented them from voting. Bill C-23 primarily prevents young people from voting, as it does aboriginal people and vulnerable citizens, such as the homeless. Basically, the voter card will no longer be accepted as a form of identification when people go to their polling station to vote in an election. With this bill, 120,000 Canadians who had to have someone vouch for them during the last federal election may not be able to vote in the next election. Bill C-23 is extremely problematic.

However, today, we are debating Bill C-50, which could prevent another cohort of Canadians from voting. I am talking about the 1.4 million Canadians who live abroad. We know that there are many reasons why Canadians choose to live abroad. Some of them are going to school, while others are working and are very mobile. I am the NDP deputy science and technology critic. I therefore talk with many scientists who find very interesting jobs or contracts that require them to live abroad for several years. I am also thinking of some of my constituents who often travel to the United States, including retirees who choose to spend their final years there. They are still very attached to Canada and they feel as though they are 100% Canadian. They would like to have the right to vote in Canada's general elections.

I would like to give a little bit of background to explain why this bill was introduced in the House and why it is so necessary. The bill is before the House because of an Ontario Superior Court decision. That court ruled that paragraph 11(d) of the Canada Elections Act, which prevents Canadian citizens who have been living abroad for more than five years from voting, is unconstitutional. We therefore have a problem. The court forced this government to take action. The decision was rendered in the case of Frank et al. v. Attorney General of Canada. It is a case that will be quoted often in this debate.

At first glance, the bill seems to harmonize the legislation with the court's decision. However, we need to be careful. We on this side of the House did our homework, and we found that that is not the case.

In fact, the bill does not bring the act in line with the Ontario Superior Court ruling. Bill C-50 does not repeal subsection 11(a) of the Canada Elections Act, and the government has still not withdrawn its appeal of the Frank ruling.

The government is talking out of both sides of its mouth. It talks about this ruling and claims to want to find a solution to the problem, but it has introduced a bill that is not consistent with the Ontario Superior Court ruling. In fact, it has introduced a bill that will cause even more problems for Canadians living abroad.

Bill C-50 will make it more difficult for all citizens living abroad to vote, whether they have been abroad for more than five years or for less. Furthermore, the bill provides for new prohibitions on the types of identification that the Chief Electoral Officer will accept from any citizen living in Canada or abroad, which could seriously compromise the votes of many Canadians come election day.

Before going into detail about the problems with this bill, I would like to talk briefly about Bill C-575, which was introduced by my colleague from Halifax. The bill is clear and unequivocal. It is the NDP's response to the decision in Frank et al. v. The Attorney General of Canada.

This bill, which was introduced in good faith, gives all Canadians living abroad the right to vote. I would like to know why my Conservative colleagues did not simply accept and adopt the bill introduced by my colleague from Halifax, which is in line with the court's ruling.

Unfortunately, the Conservatives' bill ties Elections Canada's hands and makes voter identification requirements so complicated that Canadian citizens living abroad will have a much harder time voting. They are doing this for no reason at all.

I listened to my Conservative colleagues' speeches, but I did not hear one single citation or study showing that the measures in this bill are necessary and valid. Back when the Conservative government was advocating for Bill C-23, it was also unable to quote one expert who thought the measures in the bill were a good idea.

Since I have only a minute left, I would like to go into more detail about the provision that removes the Chief Electoral Officer's discretionary power to determine what forms of identification are acceptable under certain circumstances. For example, under clause 143, the Chief Electoral Officer will no longer be able to accept a foreign driver's licence as a main form of identification or even a secondary form of identification to corroborate a main one. We have to wonder how many Canadians living abroad keep a driver's licence that is no longer valid.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as is the case when we are dealing with time allocation, usually that means that because the number of speakers is limited, York South—Weston is not represented in the debate on any particular bill.

By the way, I will be sharing my time with the member for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles.

Usually York South—Weston does not get to be represented when there is time allocation because it limits the number of speakers in total to something like 5% of the members of Parliament and that is essentially what is happening here, although today, I happened to be here during the one day that the government has allowed for debate on the bill. On the 95th occasion, I think is a record for any Westminster parliamentary democracy in the world in terms of the number of times that debate has been curtailed or stopped in a sitting of Parliament.

The notion that we are dealing with this under time allocation means that a total of six and a quarter hours will have been spent on debating the bill over the course of its life in the Houses of Parliament and the bill has some serious flaws. We have mentioned already that the bill has eliminated the ability for there to be a permanent list of electors and that list is how people who live outside of Canada could remain on the voters list without having to go through hoops each time.

When asked why the bill was coming forward, the member opposite said it is because there are 40,000 non-Canadians on the list of electors, so estimates Elections Canada. That is not why the bill is coming forward. It is coming forward because the courts have told the Conservatives that it is illegal under section 11(d) of the Canada Elections Act to deny Canadian citizens the right to vote, which is what the law did. It denied the right to vote to Canadian citizens who happened to live abroad for more than five years.

We put forward Bill C-575, a good bill that would have repealed section 11(d) of the law in such a way that we would have done away with the requirement to be outside of Canada for less than five years. The Conservatives did not like that and brought forward their own bill and I think it is telling that the member opposite suggested that is not the reason for bringing the bill forward. The Conservatives are continuing with their appeal of the Frank decision to appeal the court decision that says that it is the right of any Canadian citizen to vote in an election. I agree with that right. I think it is the right of any Canadian citizen to vote regardless of how long they have lived outside the country.

However, the Conservatives, as is the case every time the courts tell them the laws they created were wrong, have created a system that makes it worse, that makes it more difficult and is going to apparently live up to the spirit of the decision, but not the letter of the decision because it will become incredibly difficult.

I asked the member opposite whether, given that Elections Canada will now have the responsibility in every election to process all persons outside Canada every time, it will be given extra resources to do that because it will not be able to spread that out over the period between elections as it now does. It has to do it only when there is an election. As a result, I do not believe Elections Canada is going to have the resources to do it, but the member opposite would not confirm or deny. All she said was they think Elections Canada has lots of resources. That is not a proper answer.

We believe that this change in legislation is going to make it more difficult for all persons living outside Canada, not just those people who are out there for more than five years, but all persons living outside Canada. The effect of that will be to further reduce the number of people who actually vote in an election. It seems to be the Conservatives' mantra to keep people from voting because if people vote maybe they will not get elected. That is apparently what drives a lot of what the Conservatives have done.

I am going to give the example of my brother who is a dual citizen. He was born in Canada to American parents, so the U.S. has determined he is an American citizen as well. When he was living in Canada some 15 or so years ago, he was a lawyer working for a big multinational firm that decided to move his job to the U.S. After much internal wrestling, he decided he had to go with that job and he has lived in the U.S. ever since. For the first five years, he was able to vote, but he has not been able to vote for the last 10 or so years. He would have been on a list of electors for some time.

Now, he would have to prove where he last lived 15 years ago. If I know my brother, he may have kept his rent receipts but I do not know. I certainly would not have. He has to prove it, and if he cannot prove it, if he has no documentation that shows his previous address, he has to find someone who lives where he last lived to swear that he or she knows him and that he did live there. That was 15 years ago and he lived in a small apartment building in downtown Toronto. I doubt very much that he knows anybody in that riding who can vouch for the fact that he lived there. The Conservative answer to the court decision is to make that become the necessary step by which someone would need to become registered to be a voter.

I come back to the problem that it has to all be done within the writ period. He cannot get the form until after the writs. He gets the form, finds somebody who remembers him when he lived in an apartment building in downtown Toronto 15 years ago and gets that person to swear out an affidavit because it has to be an oath. I am not 100% certain whether the person has to swear out an oath in front of a justice of the peace in Canada or if it can be somewhere else, but it is the Canada Evidence Act that the Conservatives are using. Those two hoops alone would eat up the first 15 days after the writ drops.

He has 14 days left, so he fills in the form and sends it off to Elections Canada by mail, or maybe by courier if it will accept things by courier. Assuming that there are 14 days left, because he only has 29 days to act on this, then Elections Canada has to put his application into its queue. There is no obligation on Elections Canada to process it in a timely manner, it just has to process it. The only requirement is that once Elections Canada has sent him the ballot he has to return it, such that Elections Canada receives it six days before the actual election day.

It is not likely going to happen that my brother would be able to meet all of these requirements in that 29-calendar-day time period, given the vagaries of Canada Post. There is no indication in this bill that Elections Canada would have to find some fast way to get the ballot to him either. If he needs to get a ballot within a short period of time, the most appropriate way would be to courier it to him but I doubt very much that the current government thinks highly enough of the voters living outside Canada to use couriers to get them the ballot.

It is a problem that is being created by the government to suppress votes again. That is what we have seen time and again from the Conservatives whenever they have talked about election reform and voting reform. It is to ensure that people do not have the ability to vote, that for people who are on the margins of society or, in this case, on the margins of Canada, who live outside of Canada, it would become extremely difficult for them to vote. I would be willing to bet that very few people who live outside Canada would be able to cast their ballot in a meaningful time frame and would therefore be disenfranchised by these rules.

That comes back to the court decision, which says Canadians, regardless of where they live, have a right to vote in a federal election. If the Conservatives put forward a law that would deny them that right through timing or other extraneous means, it would be in violation of the charter again, of the Constitution of this country. That is why Mr. or Mrs. Frank went to the courts in the first place.

I welcome any questions.

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

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I want to say that I find it very unfortunate that this is the 95th time the Conservatives have imposed a time allocation motion. I think it is positively shameful that in our democracy, in 2015, the Conservatives will not let us have an honest discussion in the House of Commons on something like closure motions and time allocation motions.

Many of the solutions proposed could help us create a more vibrant democracy. The Conservatives have always rejected the solution proposed by the NDP to have limits on when time allocation motions can be used. I find that unfortunate. Ironically, when the Liberals imposed too many time allocation motions, the Conservatives were the first to denounce it, saying how wrong it was and how limiting debate was an affront to democracy.

Now the Conservatives have set a new record. I think there is an explanation for this. The Conservatives have realized that this is no longer making headlines. Early on, when they began moving closure and time allocation motions, that got a reaction out of people. People wondered why the Conservatives were doing that, and they were not happy about it. Now, 95 time allocation motions later, people are sick of it. There is a certain point where people stop talking about it, because it becomes redundant and there is nothing more to say on the matter. Saying that the Conservatives are attacking our democracy elicits responses like “Yes, but that is the way it is and the way it has always been”. This is nothing new, and people eventually ignore the situation. However, the reality is that we are once again faced with closure on debate. I truly believe that the Conservatives must have some sort of goal to move 100 time allocation motions before the end of the 41st Parliament. It is really unfortunate, but that is just the way it is.

Today I will be sharing my thoughts on Bill C-50. It is yet another bill to amend the Canada Elections Act. This time the amendment has to do with voting from abroad.

Bill C-50 is the solution the Conservative government is proposing in response to the legal problem caused by the Ontario Superior Court ruling in Frank et al. v. Attorney General of Canada.

I would like to take a bit of time to go over the events that brought us here in order to help those watching at home who may not have all the facts they need to properly understand our discussion today.

Summing things up like that will make it easier for me to explain why I refuse to support this bill. At the same time, I will have the opportunity to share with my hon. colleagues a few suggestions for improving this bill.

First, as I was saying, the impetus for introducing this bill last December was the decision by Justice Michael Penny of the Ontario Superior Court to nullify a part of the Canada Elections Act, specifically paragraph 11(d) regarding certain restrictions on voting applicable to Canadians living abroad.

Up until that verdict was handed down a year ago tomorrow, Canadian citizens living abroad for more than five years would lose their right to vote. Justice Penny held that this loss of the right to vote violated a constitutional right guaranteed by section 3 of the charter, which states that “Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein.”

This prescribed time limit was contrary to the spirit of the charter because it could not be justified under section 1, which guarantees the right to vote in a free and democratic society. Justice Penny further held that voting is an inalienable right under the charter. That is what is at the heart of the discussion we are having today, and it is this key point that informs my entire understanding of the problem.

We must say it over and over again: every Canadian citizen has the sovereign right to cast a ballot during an election. It is simple. However, this statement has two logical consequences. First, anyone who would attempt to hinder or prevent a Canadian citizen from voting is guilty of very serious wrongdoing. Furthermore, and this is the impetus for the bill, as a moral entity, Canada must do everything in its power to ensure that its citizens can exercise their right to vote during an election. In other words, the state administration must adjust to its citizens and not the opposite. Best efforts must be made to facilitate, encourage and honour the citizens' democratic exercise.

This view of the right to vote that I just explained will be upheld by all the courts in the land, no matter what happens.

I do not believe that I am mistaken when I say that, in addition to the courts, the people themselves will confirm this interpretation of our constitutional rights and defend it. It would seem that the only person who has not understood this is the Minister for Democratic Reform. However, I am not here to argue with and insult the government. I would like all of us to work together to find a solution to this problem.

A consideration related to what I said earlier should be addressed here. We agree that the right to vote is an inalienable constitutional guarantee. The right to vote is also a civil responsibility. A citizen has the right and the duty to vote. However, he or she does not have an obligation to vote. Refusing to exercise one's democratic right is, in my humble opinion, also guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms because abstaining from voting or spoiling one's vote constitutes a valid democratic gesture. A vote does not have any qualitative aspect. A spoiled ballot is still a ballot. I am dwelling on these details, these facts, because I want to be clear and I want to properly identify the essential nature of the right to vote. I would like my colleagues to correct me if they believe that my definitions are incorrect.

I would like to come back to the judge's verdict. This Superior Court decision took effect immediately and struck down the five-year limit set out in paragraph 11(d). After all—and I am asking those who are listening this question—why five years? What was the rationale for that timeframe? Why not 6, 10 or 20 years? I am sure that some thought went into that decision when the Canada Elections Act was reviewed in the 1990s, but this number still seems rather random to me. I am not sure when this provision was added to the Canada Elections Act, but perhaps migration was less common or more permanent at that time. When a person left for more than five years, it was only logical to assume that they were never coming back. After all, international travel was not always as easy and common as it is now.

I think that this is one of the shortcomings of the decision to quantify the loss of the right to vote at five years, a flaw that remains in the bill despite the fact that the bill is supposed to fix it. Everything I am about to say now should be taken with a grain of salt. I am going to try to describe the perception that Canadians have of themselves when they take shortcuts. In their minds, Canadians are not the sort of people who tend to emigrate. People leave for a year or two, but then they come back. They may go to the United States or Great Britain to go to school, or they may move for a diplomatic post or because they are in the military and they are stationed abroad. Otherwise, being an expat is not very serious and is more an act of social rebellion than anything else. That is basically the stereotype we have about ourselves. However, it is quite close to the reality of many Canadians. Some Canadians do a lot of travelling. Many of them have dual citizenship and share their time between two countries. These people follow Canadian politics, talk about Canada in their second country and keep up with current events in Canada. These people are full citizens and they have the same constitutional guarantee to the right to vote as every other Canadian.

This was confirmed by Justice Penny in his ruling. If a rose is a rose is a rose, then a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. No matter where a Canadian may be—even on Mars—they have a right to vote. The Office of the Chief Electoral Officer quickly responded to this Ontario Superior Court ruling, and it announced that it would no longer apply the parts of the Canada Elections Act that had been invalidated. In theory, the right to vote was thus expanded to a pool of about 1.5 million newly enfranchised voters. This was a historic decision. An entire group of people had once again been vested with the most fundamental right in our Constitution. It was anachronistic, but still exciting. Just last week we celebrated the anniversary of women obtaining the right to vote in Quebec. Need I remind members that aboriginal people just obtained the right to vote in their own country in 1960?

The five-year period set out in the Canada Elections Act was a remnant of an bygone era, and this ruling appears to have completely eliminated this exclusion.

Although this speech will soon take a more negative tone, I am very happy that the last restriction on enfranchisement in Canada has been eliminated.

With respect to selective inclusion, I would like to share a quote from David Smith of the University of Saskatchewan:

Voting is the hallmark of citizenship, both symbolically and practically....

....at different times, the House of Commons admitted and the House of Commons excluded, but in each instance, the House of Commons defined Canada.

The value of the right to vote as a guarantee of the legitimacy of this House demands absolute respect on our part.

However, this decision creates a big problem. These 1.5 million citizens who will now be able to exercise their right to vote will be added to the approximately 2.8 million other expats who were already eligible to vote.

Electoral logistics need to be properly set up so that these millions of people can vote. After all, as I said, the state is responsible for facilitating the process and collecting ballots everywhere in Canada.

This is where things get a little less fun because we are getting right into the frustrating world of political calculation.

Let us start with the good ideas and the brilliant initiatives. In February, my colleague from Halifax introduced Bill C-575, which presaged Justice Penny's decision and attempted to ensure that absolutely all Canadian citizens residing abroad would have the right to vote.

The thinking behind Bill C-575 is self-evident. In the interconnected and instantaneous world of globalization, it a good thing for Canadians to live and work around the world. The House must take immediate action to confirm these citizens' right to vote.

I would imagine that everyone agrees with the member for Halifax's ideas on this, but of course, such a historic and generous initiative from the opposition could not be tolerated, much less endorsed, by the government. The Conservatives would rather die than take the lead and accept a perfectly acceptable opposition proposal.

Hubert Aquin wrote:

Political partisanship is a means of action, not a mode of thinking.

A year and a half later, the Conservatives are finally taking action. Bill C-50 is the Conservative proposal for dealing with the consequences of Justice Penny's ruling.

However, the minister's response goes much further. In response to a clear legal decision regarding an even clearer problem, we have a vague proposal that is like a reflection dimly seen in a mirror, as St. Paul put it.

When you take a closer look at the proposals in Bill C-50, it becomes very clear very quickly that this bill is not about empowering citizens.

This bill accepts the basic premise that Canadians abroad have the right to vote, but it does so in a backwards way. Expanding the constitutional right that is the very essence of the bill and should be showcased does not actually appear in the bill and can only be read between the lines. It is an odd masterpiece of inversion, like a photographic negative.

In his speech introducing the bill, the minister showed no signs of excitement. This bill is not about the right to vote, nor is it about righting a historical wrong, far from it. Rather, it is about tyring to combat electoral fraud.

The minister said, and I quote:

The citizen voting act has three principal objectives: the first is to help prevent non-citizens from voting in federal elections; the second is to require voters living abroad to provide proof of identity, past residence, and citizenship; the third is to create one set of rules for all Canadians voting from outside the country.

The main focus of the bill is the fear of these so-called collateral misdeeds, which are presented as going hand in hand with the privilege that the government is taking such great risk to provide to Canadians living abroad.

From the outset, the government makes it clear that there is the risk of serious abuses, which are listed and may be impossible to prevent. The government's message is that it is full of goodwill, but the electorate abroad is asking for the impossible and, accordingly, the privilege to vote will come with very strict measures.

It is as though the government were saying that it was giving us the right, but in order to exercise that right, we would have to jump backwards through rings of fire in a hoop skirt. We might go so far as to say that the government is completely disregarding Justice Penny's ruling and not really giving Canadians who live abroad for more than five years the right to vote.

The government did not welcome the decision with great enthusiasm and appealed the Frank ruling. Let us not forget that it also tried to impose a moratorium on the coming into force of the ruling. Clearly, the Conservatives were hoping the problem would go away.

Nonetheless, as I said earlier, no court in this country can justify restricting a Canadian citizen's right to vote. This is the new reality, and we must implement the necessary means to ensure that everything works as it should.

In my naivety, I thought this democratic progress would be heralded for what it says about the maturity of our country. However, I again forgot that I was living in one reality whereas the Conservatives were living in a world of Stalinist paranoia where having a passport is a betrayal.

Under the guise of harmonizing the procedure—creating one set of rules, according to the minister—the Conservatives are turning what they consider to be a reversal of legal fortune into a win. Not only are they not really giving the right to vote to Canadian citizens who live abroad for more than five years, but they are also taking it away from the other 2.8 million Canadians, with a few exceptions, such as people in diplomatic postings and members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

As my colleague from Toronto—Danforth wrote in an article published in the National Post on February 3:

In fact, Bill C-50 uses the court’s rights-expanding ruling as an excuse to actually undermine the voting rights of all Canadians abroad, regardless of how long they have resided outside of Canada. It does this by generating delays that could easily prevent voting in time for election day and that creates disincentives for voting by making it unreasonably difficult.

This is what Bill C-50 is proposing to do: Canadian citizens living abroad who want to exercise their right to vote during an election will have to prove two things. First, they will have to provide proof of citizenship, which goes without saying. Second, they will have to provide proof of address for the place where they last resided before leaving Canada.

To better understand all that, we can propose a hypothetical scenario. Suppose that in 2011, I decided not to stand as a candidate in the federal election, and I decided instead to live happily somewhere abroad. Had I done that, I would have remained the same citizen I was, with less contact with the political world than I have now, a normal citizen with concerns other than the legislative changes debated in the House of Commons. Furthermore, being abroad, I would work regularly to maintain my ties to Canada. I would make an effort to consult the Canadian media and keep abreast of what is happening.

Say I want to vote in the October 2015 election. I am sure that, if I have to go through a whole process to be able to vote, it is better to get started earlier rather than later, so I go online to see what that process involves. If I search for “voting from abroad, Canada”, the first hit takes me to a Government of Canada website. On that website, it says:

If you live abroad, you may apply to be added to the International Register of Electors and vote by special mail-in ballot in future federal elections at any time.

That is no longer true because of Bill C-50. It goes on to say:

To apply, complete an Application for registration and special ballot for Canadian citizens residing outside Canada, available online through Elections Canada, in person at any Canadian government office abroad, or by calling Elections Canada...

Send your completed application and copies of your supporting documents to Elections Canada in Ottawa. Once your completed application has been approved, your name will be added to the International Register of Electors. When a federal election, by-election or referendum is called, Elections Canada mails a special ballot voting kit to all eligible electors whose names appear in the International Register.

In order to remove inaccurate information from the register—according to the government, there are 40,000 non-Canadians on the list—voters who are living abroad are going to be asked to reconfirm their place of residence.

Canadians living abroad generally believe that they will be able to just pick a riding in which to vote, but in reality that is not how it works. Canadians who are living abroad and who have not lived in Canada for a number of years sometimes have difficulty obtaining tangible evidence that they lived at their last place of residence before moving abroad.

Seeing this measure in the bill gives me a feeling of déjà vu and reminds me of the discussions that we had about Bill C-23 last year. It is very simple. Under the guise of improving the accuracy of voter identification and combatting election fraud, the Conservatives are actually making the rules as complicated and as difficult to follow as possible. In a way, they are doing as much as they possibly can to interfere with Canadians' right to vote. As I said, it gives me a feeling of déjà vu and reminds me of Bill C-23.

I do not need to remind the House about all the bad provisions that were passed by the Conservative government in its reform of the Canada Elections Act in Bill C-23. There were so many measures aimed at simply lowering voter turnout, such as no longer allowing the voter information card or vouching as a means of identification, that we can no longer trust this government when it tells us that it is doing good things or that it wants to help Canadians; we know that the underlying philosophy of undermining Canadians' right to vote as much as possible is always there.

That is why I obviously cannot support Bill C-50. We will make a number of suggestions to amend and improve this bill. With Bill C-23, we barely had enough time to debate half of the amendments proposed by the NDP.

I hope that this time we will be allowed to carefully study this bill for real in the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs and that the government will be open to improving it as much as possible.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this place on behalf of the good people of Davenport in the great city of Toronto to participate in the debate on Bill C-50.

It is important to the people in my riding. Many people in Davenport, in fact many people in Toronto, go back and forth between Canada and their home countries, the countries in which they were born. Many of my constituents live in both places and care deeply about Canada and the electoral process. They are Canadian citizens, yet from time to time over the course of one's life, end up living elsewhere for a period of time.

We already know from the various accounts that we have heard in this place how difficult it is for many immigrant Canadians to receive government services, to access Service Canada, for example, and how difficult and tricky that is for many in our community. We now are seeing another example of how the government erodes the trust of Canadian citizens who are immigrants or Canadian citizens living abroad. This bill is part of a long litany in a grand narrative, the result of which is a deepening lack of trust.

There is also a very adversarial relationship between the government and expert opinion of society and court rulings. In fact, the government has no hesitation in spending money, the dollars of hard-working Canadians, to fight court challenges and to thumb its nose on what Canadian jurisprudence would lead us to.

In this one I am referring to Superior Court Justice Michael Penny who made it clear that long-term expats who cared deeply about Canada should have the right to vote. The federal government, though, did not withdraw its appeal of the Frank judgment when it tabled Bill C-50, even though it wrote its press release and backgrounder on Bill C-50 to make it appear as if it was accepting the Frank judgment.

We have a bill, and it is important that Canadians understand that parliamentarians have been attempting to deal with this issue in a manner that reflects the values of Canadian society, which is that if an individual is a citizen in Canada, regardless of where they live, they have the right to vote.

The government will say, as it did in earlier debates around its unfair elections act, that it is making things simpler and streamlining the system. In fact, we know that is not the case. One would think that when we are faced with the reality of plummeting voting rates in liberal democracies, including Canada, that we would, as parliamentarians, be thinking about ways in which we help facilitate and invite Canadian citizens to participate more fully in the electoral process. However, we are seeing the government, once again, going in the opposite direction, to the extent that organizations have raised serious concerns about this legislation.

Dylan Penner from the Council of Canadians said, “Bill C-50 is a blatant abuse of power. The current government is trying to legislate its way around a court decision it doesn't like”, and we have heard that one before, “to further stack the deck in its favour for the next election”, and we have heard that one before too. He goes on to say, “Rather than accept a court ruling that restores voting rights, the government has decided to change the law in a way that infringes voting rights”.

I would like to add that I will be splitting my time with the member for Gatineau.

I would also like to quote from the organization Leadnow, which asked the Prime Minister and the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to commit to respecting section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees all Canadian citizens the right to vote. It reads:

Any further attempt by this government and future governments to overturn the recent court ruling that reaffirms that right will be considered an affront to the democratic rights of all Canadians.

In a sense, that gets to the crux of the issue here.

This is part of a long narrative by the Conservative government in pushing the envelope around democratic rights and freedoms, of obfuscating in and outside this place regarding its intentions. There have been countless inquiries. There have been police inquiries into voter fraud.

In short, Canadians do not trust the government.

We heard earlier this morning from the former minister of foreign affairs about the importance of this place, of the centrality of this place to preserving democracy in Canada. Yet time and time again we see a government that is willing to play fast and loose with the rules, in the hope that Canadians who are struggling just to get by in their day-to-day lives will not notice as the government starts stacking the deck in its favour. This legislation is just an example. We have not heard any compelling evidence or arguments from the government that that is not the case, and here I am talking about the grand narrative.

Over 2.8 million Canadians live abroad. These are Canadian citizens who pay about $6 billion in Canadian taxes. We need to be thinking of ways to include them more easily in our electoral process. That is a project that any government would think important and vital, but that is not what we see here. It is important that we get to some of the nuts and bolts of how these things play out. We have the legislation, but parliamentarians need to hear how these bills would affect people living their day-to-day lives.

Bill C-50 proposes to give Canadian citizens only five weeks before an election to complete the process. The citizen must send in the form and Elections Canada has to mail out a special ballot. The citizen then has to mail that ballot back. As one Canadian abroad put it when consulted on the impact of Bill C-50, “With international postal delays being what they are, expats have to use FedEx or other courier services to have any hope of their vote being counted”.

Elections Canada is not legally mandated to do the same. In other words, if Elections Canada sends the ballot by surface mail, voters outside of North America are going to have a difficult time. Even just the timing of this is going to be difficult. One would think that the government would take these issues into consideration, but what do we expect from a government that is seeking to tear down bit by bit our own postal service. I suppose that is what we get.

This legislation is of deep concern to our party. We have a solution in Bill C-575 put forward by the member for Halifax. I would urge the government to look seriously at that legislation.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my Conservative colleague's speech.

I still have to wonder why the government did not consider the bill introduced by my colleague from Halifax. This bill would have fixed a lot of the problems we are discussing today. If my Conservative colleague had listened to the comments and questions from Liberal and New Democrat members, she surely would have seen that we think the bill creates more problems than it fixes, while the bill introduced by my colleague from Halifax would fix a number of problems, in my opinion.

Has the member read Bill C-575, introduced by my colleague from Halifax?

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP has long been defending Canadians' right to vote, whether they live in Canada or abroad.

In February 2014, my colleague from Halifax took the initiative and introduced Bill C-575 in order to extend the right to vote to all Canadians living abroad.

Does the Liberal member agree with the NDP that Canadian citizens living abroad should have the right to vote?

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for his presentation. Along with my colleague from Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, I acknowledge that this may not be the best day for the minister in terms of his health. Accordingly, in the spirit of what we heard from the Minister of Foreign Affairs, I may be a little more gentle than I was intending to be.

Some here might have had a chance to read the piece that came out today in the National Post, where I make it very clear that I do believe—this sounds like how I started the debate on Bill C-23, what we call “the unfair elections act”—that the effect, at minimum, of these changes in Bill C-50 would voter suppression of citizens living abroad, and something that I am not sure the minister is fully aware of, namely, that it could create chaos with voting in Canada, because of the changes to a section that would prohibit the Chief Electoral Officer from authorizing any use of ID that basically does not have its origin Canada. I will explain why that could cause those problems.

I will stick with this phraseology that “in the result”, this is the problem, although seeing what has been knowingly put in the bill, I honestly think that the minister has to realize what these impacts would be. I hope that with some of the presentations during this debate and some of the criticisms he is already beginning to receive, he will be open to some serious amendments, including a couple that, to follow his own line, would be quite simple and could actually get rid of some of the serious blocking effects that I see. It is also important to note, although the minister did not really make hay of this in his own speech today, that in the presentation back in December when the bill was tabled, there very much was an effort to spin this bill in a way that created two false impressions. This is important to know.

One is that the press release in the backgrounder made it seem like the government was implementing the Frank judgement, which basically said that citizens away for more than five years now have the right to vote from abroad. It was very unclear from the presentation whether or not the Frank judgment was being accepted. It is important that everyone knows that Bill C-50 would not remove any provision in the Canada Elections Act that was struck down by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in the Frank decision. It is still sitting in the statute. The reason for this is that the government has clearly decided it is going to continue to fight to prevent citizens who have been away for more than five years from voting. It is appealing the decision, and it even sought a stay of the trial judgment to try to prevent it from going into effect. The Court of Appeal for Ontario denied that stay.

The fact of the matter is that the government is still actively seeking to keep as disenfranchised Canadians who have been living abroad for more than five years. Yet the presentation of the bill made it look like this was somehow an effort to bring things into line. If this were really bringing things in line with the Frank judgment, all the government would have to do would be to adopt the suggestion by the member for Halifax in her Bill C-575 and simply repeal the same sections the judge found to be unconstitutional in the case. Instead, the Frank decision is being used as a supposed reason for a wholesale change of issues that never arose in the Frank case. It is important to ensure that the Frank judgment does not carry the government along in any sense where people think the government is actually respecting that judgment. It is still appealing it.

Second, the press release directly claims that all Bill C-50 would do is to apply the same voter identification rules enacted by the so-called Fair Elections Act, Bill C-23, and extend those rules to Canadians voting from abroad. There is some truth in that. There are some analogues that get brought forward. For instance, the vouching for an address gets brought forward. However, Bill C-50 inserts a new prohibition on the kinds of documents the Chief Electoral Officer could designate as identity documents. It would apply to documents used by all.

The new subsection 143(2.11) would apply to all electors and would basically create additional limitations on what the Chief Electoral Officer would be free to authorize by way of identity documents.

Because of the wording in that provision, this would have impacts in Canada. It would also make it extraordinarily difficult for some Canadians abroad to produce the right kinds of ID that now they have to produce. They would not be able because of this change. This is new. This was not in Bill C-23.

I just want to set the scene by making clear that this is the case.

It is also important to note, to set the scene, although the minister has downplayed it in his presentation today, and I acknowledge that. There was a sign it was not going to go this way. There is virtually no reality to the idea that there is a fraud problem from voters from abroad. The judge in the Superior Court, Mr. Justice Penny, basically said that those kinds of claims were so unreal as to not even constitute a pressing and substantial reason under section 1 of the charter to limit the right to vote.

“Riding shopping” is not something that Elections Canada has ever seen as being a problem. All that happens at the moment is that multiple points of contact are available to increase the chances, the ease with which somebody from abroad can vote. The idea that there is something illicit going on when people choose to vote where their parents live versus choosing to vote where they last lived seems to me to be a spin that is designed to make this look palatable or necessary when there is actually no problem. There is no such thing as “riding shopping”, except perhaps in the minister's imagination.

It is important to clarify that when the minister talks about 40,000 non-citizens being on the register, this was brought to his attention—and I am glad that two years later he is acting upon it—by the Chief Electoral Officer. The new mechanism that would allow the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to allow Elections Canada access to the non-citizen database that CIC has would be great. However, it is important to note that we are talking about a fear, by error, that approximately that number of people are on the national register, not on what is, until this point in time, the international register. To get on the international register, one has to actually show one's citizenship.

It is a separate issue that would be dealt with in the bill, but it should not be confused with anything to do with a concern that non-citizens are voting from abroad. I fear that, unintentionally, the minister's emphasis on that could allow people to think this is what is going on. No, the issue is cleaning up the national register for people who are in Canada. That is fine. That one particular piece is a good thing in the bill.

I do feel duty-bound to note that Elections Canada was not consulted on this, except for the discussion a couple of years ago on the issue of trying to ensure non-citizens were removed from the national register where they appeared in error. That will probably prove to be a problem at the time of committee because we will probably hear some very detailed testimony from Elections Canada about many problems the bill would create.

As long as the minister is open, seriously open, to changing them, because these have not been foreseen because there has been no consultation, we might well end up with a productive committee process. If the minister thinks it has all been thought through and that whatever he hears from Elections Canada will not change his mind, then we will have a serious problem. What we will have, in effect, is the minister confirming that the intention here is to make it much more difficult to vote from abroad and that it is not just the unfortunate result of how the act was written.

Let me go to this issue that is the sleeper issue. It is the question of subsection 143(2.11). It is a new provision that would basically create a new prohibition on the Chief Electoral Officer. It says:

—the Chief Electoral Officer is not permitted to authorize...a type of identification that has been issued by an entity other than...a Canadian government, whether federal, provincial or local, or an agency of that government; and...an entity that is incorporated or formed by or under an Act of Parliament or of the legislature of a province or that is otherwise formed in Canada.

It is fairly complex wording.

The bottom line, as the minister made clear, is to ensure that ID only originates in Canada, essentially. That seems to be the general idea. The problem, however, is that it has been done in a way that might actually end up creating some serious administrative, and even more serious problems, in Canada.

This new prohibition, which is intended to deal with voters from abroad so they have to somehow produce Canadian-originated ID, is going to have an impact on everybody who shows up on election day in Canada.

What is the reason for that concern? First, “formed in Canada” is not a legally known concept and is not defined in the bill. The question of what an “entity formed in Canada” means is going to produce some serious problems in Elections Canada trying to scope it out, and then having that interpreted on election day by pressed election officials. We really need to ensure that this will be clear. Obviously the intention is probably that organizations like the CNIB are covered, and it is not just documents issued by corporations, for example, utilities bills, et cetera. However, the language is used in a way that is very unclear.

Here is an issue. Now a voter can use a Visa, Amex or MasteCard bill as one piece of ID to show an address. However, people could show up with it, and the deputy returning officer or the chief poll officer could look at it and ask if Visa is a company incorporated or formed in Canada, is there a Visa Canada and who has issued the document. The chance of that kind of minute questioning will be a problem, even if it seems farfetched. It will create serious workability problems. I know for a fact that Elections Canada is concerned about this extra burden and the mistakes that could be made.

The second thing is that it is not at all clear to me that private leases will be caught by this wording, as I asked in my question to the minister. The language is all about corporations, entities or government agencies. There is no scope there for a document that has effectively been issued by an individual, which is what private rental leases are. They are often a form of identification to prove address that students in university tend to use.

The bottom line is that this will create workability issues that I do not think the minister intended to create, but that we will hear about in committee from Elections Canada. The unworkability issue is major.

I am also concerned that some party scrutineers who now would be allowed to ask to inspect identification documents as a result of Bill C-23 would see these new rules as an opportunity to ask, more often than they should, for proof that this new provision has been met by whatever document has been presented by somebody showing up.

If somebody shows up with a Visa bill, somebody might ask the deputy returning officer if that is a document issued by an entity formed in Canada. Maybe it is a document issued by an entity doing business in Canada. We can imagine the opportunity for mischief that could occur.

I am being a bit like the minister in that I am looking down the line at what kind of abuse is possible. The minister looks in one place and I look in another. We have to talk about that.

In my remaining minutes, I want to talk about what everybody knows is a big concern. The big concern here is that the new requirements for citizens voting from abroad can be extremely onerous. They can produce delays that can result in ballots not arriving in time to be counted.

The primary problem is the requirement that voters have to register for each election, apply to receive their ballot or register, the same kind of thing collapsed into one, only once the writ has been dropped. People have to be aware that it has happened. They have to register quickly enough in order to ensure that all the mail can occur. As the minister has said, sending in their application, even if that is virtually, and receiving the special ballot and mailing it in and doing that from Dar es Salaam, New Delhi or Sydney, requires time.

There are all kinds of reasons to think that the way the mail service works or the way citizens abroad may be not be immediately on top of when a writ has been dropped could result in timelines that could be almost impossible to make. Currently, people can register in the international register at any time. However, I believe we will hear testimony from Elections Canada saying that currently when people wait to register until the election has been called, there is an increased incidence of the ballot not arriving in time.

A system has been created in this new bill whereby that problematic situation that we already know exists, for some who wait too long to register, get their ballots and mail them in, is now scripted as the only way. Therefore, the delay issue is huge.

We should also not underestimate the problem of ID. The longer people have been away, the chances that they have retained Canadian-issued IDs, apart from their passports, may go down dramatically. In some jurisdictions when people get local drivers' licences, they actually have to hand in their old drivers' licences. People who are hoarders, and have kept every ID they have ever had, may have no problem. However, with no notice, many of the two million Canadians already abroad may already have sort of jettisoned or lost the IDs that they now have to use.

They cannot rely on the Chief Electoral Officer to issue a list of acceptable foreign IDs that go along with proving people's addresses. Let us say people still have to prove their last known addresses in the way the bills wants, but they can use their passports and some foreign piece of ID as corroborating ID. The Chief Electoral Officer is not permitted to allow that, even though a foreign driver's licence is at least as good in proving who one is as a Canadian licence. It has nothing to do with the address, but it does with identity. Therefore, there are serious problems with actually producing two pieces of ID for some abroad that we have to take into account.

Let me now talk about vouching. The bill would get rid of the possibility that people could vote where they would have a strong connection to relatives and would focus only on people's last known addresses. The problem is they have to prove it affirmatively. If people do not have pieces of documentation saved, such as a driver's licence, which in New York state they have given up to the Americans, then they basically will have to rely on this new vouching provision.

The new vouching provision says that people have to provide proof of their last place of residence, so they would have to contact their neighbours and ask them if they remembered them when they were neighbours seven years ago. They would have to ask them to do this attestation. They would need a statutory declaration, see their IDs to prove they are voters, have them fill out a form, get the form back to them and then include it in their package in applying to vote. We can obviously see that the one big problem is the delay this will create. The need to have someone vouch for them within a 35-day election campaign period will already make it virtually impossible to meet that deadline.

The other issue is that all the same rules in Bill C-23 apply. A person cannot vouch for more than one individual. If a family of four living abroad can only find one neighbour who still lives where the family used to live and the neighbour lives alone, that neighbour can only vouch for one of them. The other three are out of luck.

Therefore, it is very clear that the issue of how the vouching system would work will not be as relatively easy as it is in Canada when somebody on election days goes with the person to vouch for him or her. The idea of saying that the rules are the same for those voting in Canada and those voting abroad is a very formalistic understanding of equality, because when the same rules are applied to very different circumstances, there is a serious disadvantage in complying with the rules. The committee will find example after example like this and the minister will really have to get his mind around them.

Let me give another example. Students going abroad to get their masters degrees or Ph.D.s quite often are heading off from a previous university. Now, sitting in London, Paris, or New York, they will have to prove that their last residences were in university towns and pretty much the only people who know that was the case are former students, who themselves have moved on. How will a proper vouching system be created for that particular case? It may sound like an imaginary issue, but it is not. When we think about students moving around internationally, they usually move from a university town or an address that they lived at to obtain their education.

What I would say is that in its result, Bill C-50 is a clear exercise in suppressing the votes of citizens abroad in a way that is diametrically opposite to the spirit of the Frank judgement, which the minister started out by invoking as the reason for these changes.

In sympathy for the minister and his illness today, as he seems to have the flu, I will not hit too hard any more, but I very much hope that he is not doing this intentionally in the bill. I also hope that, for once, we will be able to make serious changes at committee based on the evidence that there are problems with this bill.

Canada Elections Act

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-575, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (residence of electors).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce this bill. The bill would strike down section 11(d) of the Canada Elections Act, which states that Canadian citizens who have lived outside of Canada for more than five years do not qualify as electors in Canada. It is patently undemocratic to restrict people's ability to participate in our democracy because they are engaging in the myriad opportunities that are available globally. Canadians living outside the country still have a vested interest in the decisions of government, taxation, our economy, our justice system, and rights. While there might have been sound policy reasons to create this restriction in the past, in this day and age of airplanes, Internet, social media, and instantaneous information transmission, those reasons are long outdated.

Under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadian citizens who are 18 years and older have the right to vote as well as the right to enter, remain in, and leave Canada. Canadians living abroad are a significant asset to Canada domestically and internationally. These Canadians may not hold citizenship somewhere else, yet they are being totally and unreasonably disenfranchised. I hope the House looks favourably on the bill. I look forward to its passage.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)