Bill C-33 (Historical)

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

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act to
(a) remove limitations on public education and information activities conducted by the Chief Electoral Officer;
(b) establish a Register of Future Electors in which Canadian citizens 14 to 17 years of age may consent to be included;
(c) authorize the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to provide the Chief Electoral Officer with information about permanent residents and foreign nationals for the purpose of updating the Register of Electors;
(d) remove the prohibition on the Chief Electoral Officer authorizing the notice of confirmation of registration (commonly known as a “voter information card”) as identification;
(e) replace, in the context of voter identification, the option of attestation for residence with an option of vouching for identity and residence;
(f) remove two limitations on voting by non-resident electors: the requirement that they have been residing outside Canada for less than five consecutive years, and the requirement that they intend to return to Canada to resume residence in the future; and
(g) relocate the Commissioner of Canada Elections to within the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer, and provide that the Commissioner is to be appointed by the Chief Electoral Officer, after consultation with the Director of Public Prosecutions, for a non-renewable term of 10 years.
In addition, the enactment contains transitional provisions and makes consequential amendments to other Acts.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you.

Yes, thanks for at least thinking about that. You have Bill C-33. It's got to go through second reading, and then it will get referred to this committee. It is conceivable that the bill will wind up before we've gone into the summer, and that could be an issue. I'm not saying that will happen, but it certainly is feasible.

I assume that the House is going to vote in favour of Bill C-33 at second reading, which inevitably sends it back to us, and that creates an issue, given the fact that we're talking about the Standing Orders right now.

There's a third piece of legislation from same minister that is highly relevant. Minister Gould indicated some time back—about a month back or perhaps a bit longer—that she would be producing election finance legislation to change aspects of how financing is done. We don't know all the things that are going to be included in this legislation. We do know certain things that won't be contained and certain things that will, but we don't know all the parameters of the legislation. I only know what has been reported in the media. It will not, for example, change the donation limit currently set at $1550—or $1500 set for inflation, which puts it currently a $1550.

It will deal with a requirement for the public reporting of fundraising events at which a minister is present. The logic there for the advance notification is that this does not serve... I think I'm characterizing Minister Gould's comments correctly when I say this means that fundraising events at which a person has paid, let's say for the sake of argument, $300 for a ticket, will not involve confidential access to a minister who is present. You still get access to a minister, but you wouldn't get access that the public doesn't know about until after the fact. You'd be able to know in advance.

My understanding is that the Liberal party has recently adopted this approach voluntarily, and, indeed, it looks like the attempt is to take a process that the Liberal party has adopted and codify it to make it required of all parties. Now, of course, only the Liberal party has ministers at the moment, to state the obvious, so I have a suspicion that this would also involve all members of Parliament. Anyone who is paying for attendance at any event at which the MP is present will be covered—except that they say purely local events won't covered. I don't know how they're going to do that exactly. Maybe it depends on whether the funds are going to the riding association or to the party. That's not clear to me. At any rate, last week I saw a newspaper article saying that this legislation was coming forward this spring and that the minister was in the process of consulting with the other parties about it.

I had somehow managed to get the idea in my head incorrectly that this legislation would be coming forward this autumn, not this spring. So I took the newspaper article and buttonholed the minister in the House, sat down beside her, and started chatting. It was meant to be brief chat. It wound up being a very awkward period for me because, almost immediately after I went over to sit with her, Kevin Lamoureux stood up, and I was in the camera shot. He proceeded to give a talk that was harshly critical of my House leader, so I had to sit on the floor and try to keep my head hidden behind a desk, but none of this is Minister Gould's fault. It was just bad timing on my part.

What she said was, yes indeed, she was planning on introducing that legislation this spring. She indicated that she had already consulted with one of the parties and was trying to line up a meeting with representatives of my party. I know that meeting hasn't happened yet, because I would be present at it as the relevant critic, but she then went on to lay out a bit of her timeline. She said, “You know, I don't control the times on these things exactly; it has to go to cabinet for approval.” I'm assuming that the cabinet process she has to go through is like the cabinet process that governments in the past had. It usually goes to the cabinet committee first, which meets and approves it, and then a presentation is made by the chair of the cabinet committee with the relevant minister present. Then if it gets approval, it comes back and is introduced in the House—but that happens this spring.

It could be that it will simply be introduced this spring, have first reading, and not get second reading until the summer is over. We did not get into discussing that, and I think in all fairness she doesn't know. However, in the event that it does, we could find that piece of business before this committee. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that this item of business would be before this committee this spring, and I say that for the following reason, because as a piece of legislation, it has to go through this House and then through the Senate. As you know, one of the complaints that the government has been making is that the Senate does not move with alacrity. Indeed, this has been a complaint of all governments through the entire history of our confederation. If you go back and read debates from the 1860s about what it was like before Confederation, we had the Legislative Council of the Province of Canada, and you realize that they had the same complaints about that body too. So this has been going on since time immemorial, or at least since we have had Hansard records.

There is a legitimate worry that what would happen is something such as this: if this committee and the House don't deal with this particular item until the autumn, and the House comes back in mid-September, we will deal with this item of business, this new piece of financial legislation, through the remainder of the month of September. Yet if we don't start dealing with it in this committee before September, it would be optimistic to hope to get it out of the House of Commons before the end of September. It would be hard to imagine its getting out before the October break, the Thanksgiving break. So we're talking now of mid-October when it would come back. It would go to the Senate, and the chances of it getting that legislation through so that it would get royal assent by the end of 2017 are pretty remote. That means the financial rules, which are set on the calendar year, will remain in effect for all of 2018. So I can see her wanting to get this legislation through promptly, which means that it could wind up on our agenda in June as well. That is a realistic scenario. So you now have three pieces of legislation all coming from Minister Gould to us, all of which have to be dealt with by us this spring.

I should take a step backwards and concede the point that, in terms of the recommendation we are making vis-à-vis the as-yet-unwritten legislation that will respond to the review of the Canada Elections Act, it's not a legislative process that we're talking about. It is a practice that has arisen in this place to deal with elections act reform. So we're not trying to get legislation through by the end of June; we're trying to get a study and recommendations through, which then lead to her introducing legislation in the autumn. She was quite clear about that in her March 10 meeting here. She's not talking about introducing that piece of legislation this June; she's talking about having the summer free to design, with her officials, legislation that conforms as best it can with our recommendations. However, she has the right as a minister of the crown to disagree with some of the recommendations and say either, “I think the CEO was right to recommend X, while the committee recommended not X, but Y”, or “I disagree with both of them and I'm introducing something else.”

It is very likely, and I'm certain that this is the case, as it has been the practice in the past, that she would take our reports, read them thoroughly, as I'm confident she does, and would go with her officials to meet with the Chief Electoral Officer and the officials at Elections Canada, presumably on more than one occasion, to discuss whether what she's drafting in response seems workable from their point of view. Actually, there is no Chief Electoral Officer at the moment, so it would be the acting CEO.

I can see how that would take a whole summer. That's really easy to imagine. So she comes back, the House reconvenes around the 8th, 9th, or 10th, somewhere in that range, and she could introduce that bill at first reading immediately. In fact, I'm virtually certain that this is exactly what would happen with that piece of legislation. She went through with us on March 10...a discussion of some of the things that she would try to achieve. It's clear that she was hoping to get that legislation through the House and the Senate, and to have royal assent by December 31 so this, too, could be in effect—although, in all fairness, when it comes to that legislation, actually having it in effect is not as important as having a certain message that it will come into effect. If Elections Canada can be confident that it is going to go through, the legislative process on this issue being generally non-partisan.... I think that, on a technical piece of legislation like this, it's likely to be largely non-partisan. The things we would be doing would be picking up on technical errors. We are now reviewing a piece of legislation designed by the minister and her staff in co-operation with the CEO, after we've done a review and after the CEO has done a review. Presumably, the really big bugs have been worked out of the system by that point, so hopefully we can proceed with more speed here, and in the Senate.

That would hopefully make it possible for this to move through with some speed, but we still have to deal with it. It still has to happen. We have no control whatever over how things happen in the other place. Complicating all of this a bit, as I mentioned, is the fact that we don't currently have a CEO. We do have a CEO hiring process under way. It's a public hiring process, which moves at its own speed, so there is an additional wrinkle there in terms of how fast the response of the CEO will be. Not having a permanent CEO, and then having a new CEO presumably by some point midway through this process, will not speed up the adoption by the Chief Electoral Officer and Elections Canada of the recommendations made here, which encourages us to have greater speed. Certainly, I would think that no interim CEO would be comfortable putting something into effect, knowing that it doesn't have the approval of someone who will be appointed shortly and who will be the boss. If I am on the staff of Elections Canada, I would not want that person to walk in and discover that there have been a bunch of faits accomplis that the new boss might not approve of, which have been done, in a sense, in order to push that person into losing their decision-making authority over those changes. Those are some of the practical issues that exist.

With all of this in mind, all of these problems that relate back to the Minister of Democratic Institutions and the workload that she has given us, I drafted a letter to the minister, asking her how she ought to deal with this and also encouraging her to consider dealing with some of her colleagues in the cabinet to cause them to shift the direction they are taking with regard to the high importance they are placing on reviewing the Standing Orders by a June deadline so that we can deal, in as businesslike a manner as possible, with the matters that we were dealing with and that we are going to have to deal with—the workload that was already great in margin and that has grown, depending on how you measure it, threefold since that time.

This is a letter being sent off with today's date on it. I'll just read it verbatim. I think it would be helpful for members of the committee to see exactly where I'm coming from so that they'll know what she is receiving. If they want to communicate with her—either because they agree with what I'm saying, or because they disagree—they can do so. I think that makes this germane to what we're doing here.

Dear Minister Gould,

Thank you for your invitation, sent to my office on April 3, 2017, for an in-person meeting. I appreciate your regular and continuing openness to meeting with me to discuss your portfolio and matters pertaining to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs (PROC). Both of those things are germane to my letter today.

During your last appearance before PROC, on March 9, 2017—

Mr. Chair, I have to stop here. I think I've been saying all along “March 10” for Minister Gould's appearance. It was March 9. That was a Thursday. March 10 was the date for Minister Chagger's discussion paper being introduced and Mr. Simms' motion. That's right.

I'm going to make a note to myself, because I want to return to the dates on those. I think there's a point of significance that I had not realized earlier in our discussion, which I think helps explain some of the problem we're facing here. Sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, and it can lead to problems further down the line. I think that may have occurred here through no individual fault.

Okay. To go back to the letter:

During your last appearance before [the Procedure and House Affairs committee] on March 9, 2017, you asked the committee to provide our next report on the Chief Electoral Officer's report entitled, An Electoral Framework for the 21st Century: Recommendations From the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada Following the 42nd General Election—

I then give a quote from the minister about reporting back, as follows:

—“before the House rises for the summer, preferably by May 19” so that you would “be well positioned to advance some significant reforms that would improve the electoral process for Canadians”, namely through legislation that you hope to introduce this coming autumn.

So far, PROC has spent 16 meetings to produce two reports on the Chief Electoral Officer's report. When you asked [the procedure and House affairs committee] on March 9 for a further report by May 19, [the procedure and House affairs committee] would normally have had 12 additional meetings in which to prepare that report. [Four] of those 12 meeting times have elapsed without further progress on the report having been made.

Seeing as I'm sending this letter off today, I'm going to have to change that to five. Let's see: is that right? Yes, today's meeting would be five. I'll continue:

At this time, it is uncertain how many meetings [the procedure and House affairs committee] will be able to devote to this report, or whether the committee will be able to provide you with a report at all by the date you identified.

I won't repeat my comments. I'll simply draw attention to them again, which is that I already think that we have to accept that May 19 is a lost cause, although I think June is still achievable for a report back to the minister if we do some triaging.

To go back to the letter:

This uncertainty is on account of events precipitated by your cabinet colleague, the Government House Leader, [Bardish Chagger] on and since March 10, 2017, the day after your last visit to [the procedure and House affairs committee]. ...These events have brought to a halt the committee's ability to work on the Chief Electoral Officer's report.

The letter continues:

In light of the situation presently unfolding in [the procedure and House affairs committee], I am writing to ask you whether you could give [our committee] indications on a number of questions, namely:

1. Whether the May 19 date for a report is flexible;—

I actually think the answer to that from her was that yes, it was—that it was a preferred date—but I'm hoping her response would give some indication of the degree to which there's flexibility and at what point she has what I think of as a drop-dead timeline.

For example, you mean to go and cast your ballot at a certain time. You mean to do it in the mid-afternoon and something comes up—you have to take the kids to day care and then something else comes up—but we all know that there's a point at which the polls close. That's your drop-dead deadline for voting. Well, there's a drop-dead deadline for getting this thing back to her. I'm hoping to elicit a response as to what that is. Or if she wishes to give a more nuanced response about which parts should come first—if there are going to be multiple drop-dead deadlines—that would be just fine.

That was number one. I'll continue:

2. Whether you would still accept a report before the House rises for the summer, as you indicated;

3. What alternatives you might suggest in order to provide you with feedback in time to be considered for your fall legislation;

4. Your view of how [the procedure and House affairs committee] should prioritize the business it has in front of it, or will have in front of it, to the extent that those items conflict. Those items being:

a. the CEO recommendations report;

b. Bill C-33, which...[at time of this writing] is at second reading stage in the House;

c. your planned bill this spring on [the financing of political parties]; and

d. the on-going discussion over proposed changes to the House of Common Standing Orders, based on [the] discussion paper released by the Government House Leader on March 10, 2017, and presently subject to a motion calling for a report to be completed by June 2, 2017.

As you know—

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes, that makes a lot of sense actually.

If Bill C-33 comes up Thursday, I will probably suspend for the time that bill is in the House, because everyone on this committee should be in the House for that. We're the ones who will deal with that bill.

Thank you, Mr. Reid.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Right. And that bill is up in the House at what time? Does anybody know? Does anybody have an idea when Bill C-33 is up in the Commons on Thursday? Is it 10 a.m.?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

All right, nothing tripped. Presumably when we're over in West Block, we will have fewer of these sorts of issues.

At any rate, returning to the subject at hand, the cycle is to go through the Chief Electoral Officer's review, our recommendations on the CEO's review, and from there move to the minister then designing legislation.

The ever-vigilant Rachel Aiello, who is sitting over at the media desk right now, along with her colleague Laura Ryckewaert, has written a number of articles for The Hill Times about the progress being made on that file. It's slow progress, but that's the nature of a detailed discussion on detailed legislation.

Although there is a minister responsible, as there must be under our Constitution, this one statute, unlike all other statutes in Canada, is not dealt with by the minister and his or her public servants working on developing the first draft of legislation internally and then revealing it. Rather, we assume that essentially the people who would fulfill the role normally fulfilled by those public servants is this committee. When we act collegially and as a whole, we are collectively fulfilling the role that the minister has in terms of providing material for new elections legislation.

That wasn't the whole basis, but it was part of the basis for the objection that a number of people had—Mr. Christopherson most volubly—on the subject of Bill C-33, which popped out before we'd finished our review.

We have a process that was violated by introducing Bill C-33 in the manner in which it was introduced. That is without regard to the issue of the content of Bill C-33, to which I think Mr. Christopherson had less in the way of objection. I know certainly that was true for me. While I don't agree with everything in Bill C-33, I do think that the way in which it was introduced, too early in the process, was itself an issue.

It was introduced in December. That was too early. However, in all fairness, there's comes a point at which it is too late to put in place some of the changes that need to be made to the Canada Elections Act, because it just takes time to implement some of these systems.

That, of course, was the very same issue that existed with regard to the electoral reform legislation. It was always a question of whether we could we get a new system in place in time for the 2019 election, given the amount of time it takes to do all the different things that would have had to be done on that issue.

I'm aware that we're not discussing electoral reform legislation here. I use this merely because it is an analogy that I am very familiar with from having sat on the electoral reform committee for a number of months. I got the chance to ask the Chief Electoral Officer and also the former Chief Electoral Officer, Mr. Jean-Pierre Kingsley, quite detailed questions about the amount of time it takes to engage in various processes that would be engaged were we to change to a new electoral system. Some of the changes they pointed to, some of the ones that take the longest, are not, strictly speaking, relevant. They're not relevant at all to the kinds of changes to the Canada Elections Act being contemplated here. The longest and most complicated was undoubtedly the 20 to 24 months required to engage in a redistribution. That was the hard limit, the outer limit that they faced.

Then I asked them a series of questions at the various meetings of the electoral reform committee and also of this committee. I asked both those gentlemen about other issues that might arise: designing ballots, designing manuals, and so so. These issues, while they are less time-consuming than that of the actual electoral redistribution, are the areas in which we see direct analogies to what is going on with the proposed changes to the Canada Elections Act.

That takes some time to implement. Everything, of course, has to be prepared by Elections Canada for distribution to all 338 of our constituencies, some of which are quite remote. Any new procedure has to be worked through, and an education process has to happen—all before the writ is dropped—with one returning officer from each riding. They then, of course, during the writ period or in the immediate period leading up to it, have to educate many deputy returning officers and poll clerks, so that this can all be executed seamlessly in literally tens of thousands of polling stations across the country.

Not every procedure has to be executed at every polling station. Some are done only at, for example, the 338 locations where advance polls are counted, or the smaller number of locations at which ballots are being mailed out for those who are voting overseas and so on. There is a lot of work. It's all being done in parallel, and it all takes time.

With these considerations in mind, Minister Gould approached this committee on March 10 and asked us to try to wrap up our work by June. She actually said preferably by May 19. This is referring to our work on the Canada Elections Act. I guess it depends who you're asking, how difficult it would be to accomplish this.

Mr. Chair, in speaking of The Hill Times, you indicated that we've picked the easiest things and have already dealt with them, and we're actually getting into the more difficult work. You didn't say the following, but it implies that the more time-consuming work—in trying to get through the remaining areas of the Canada Elections Act that we haven't yet dealt with—is still to come.

My own view is that we are getting educated and are therefore building up a body of expertise that allows us as a group to move more quickly, so we might actually make some unexpected progress. Those are my public remarks, which have been published in The Hill Times.

Additionally, my private thoughts have been that we also could go through a triage process, in which we say here are the things that really need to be studied by the committee. There may be other things about which we can say, if we don't get to this, it's actually not as critical. This allows us potentially to deal in more depth with some of the areas in the Elections Act and not others, or deal with some in more detail and others in less detail.

The reason I say this is that we are confronted by deadlines that are increasingly difficult to meet. The minister recognized at the time—I don't have her remarks in front of me, but I hope to get them and bring them back to the committee and share them with you in greater precision, because what I like about her is that she is very precise in her thoughts. You have clearly defined deadlines to work towards, and that's a valuable asset when one is trying to deal with the problem we ultimately have of limited time, limited human resources, and an important area of subject matter. She actually went off, saying we have x number of items to deal with subsidiary to our review of the Elections Act. We have, ideally, from her point of view, May 19 as the deadline.

I think we'd have to concede that the May 19 deadline could not be met by this committee under any circumstances. If we were, for the sake of argument, Mr. Chair, to resolve to cease all activity on the matter of the Standing Orders and set it aside until after the review of the Canada Elections Act were done—something I actually think would be the sensible way to go—and we were to just stick with our scheduled meetings, we'd have, of course, a two-week break beginning.... I guess we'd get one meeting in on Thursday, we'd then have a two-week break, and then we would reconvene and it would be May. It does take some time, typically two meetings, to get the actual report written, as opposed to putting together the recommendations.

So getting the report written and out the door to the House by May 19.... What have we got? We'd have four meetings I think before May 19. It might be six. No, I think it's four, Mr. Chair, and two of those would be eaten up with something that is not really adding to our subject matter—designing the report. I think the May 19 deadline is already not achievable.

She also said, “but I could live with June”. I think that's what we're talking about. Getting that done by June would involve a very substantial amount of work. That is the first item we have to deal with.

A second item we have to deal with, Mr. Chair, is Bill C-33 itself, which deals with some of the same subject matter. What the minister now has to do when she's designing her legislation is to work around Bill C-33, and it's by no means certain that Bill C-33 itself exhaustively with the sections of the act it is amending.... It was designed to deal with certain problems that the government felt had been introduced to the Canada Elections Act by the previous bill that had been introduced in the wake of this committee's hearings in the last Parliament, that is to say the Fair Elections Act.

The way Minister Monsef described this was that it would be dealing with what she characterized as the unfair features of the Fair Elections Act. I think from her point of view that was a sincere characterization, because I noticed in looking at Bill C-33 that there were aspects of the Fair Elections Act that it did not repeal. That suggests to me that Minister Monsef and the whole cabinet, which I assume had to agree to this bill, felt these were fair aspects of the Fair Elections Act. This deals, for example, with a number of areas regarding overseas voters and there are other areas as well that have been left intact, but it went through in an order that is different from the order in which we're approaching things.

The new piece of legislation would, presumably, have to be crafted to take into account the areas of the Elections Act that have been dealt with in the Chief Electoral Officer's report and have become the subject matter of the reports this committee is working on, but that have not been dealt with through Bill C-33.

There's the question—which we haven't really dealt with yet—of what we do with areas that the Chief Electoral Officer's report does deal with and that have also now been dealt with by Bill C-33. That's possibly one place area where you could engage in the triage exercise and just say, look, given our limited time, given the fact that the government has already dealt with this in Bill C-33, maybe we should just excise these areas from our study. That would allow us to somewhat compress the time we need to go through the Elections Act.

Here you are, the minister has got the new law she's working on, Bill C-33, which will go before the Commons this Thursday. If I might add, Mr. Chair, this raises a point that is of some concern to me. I think the hours we are scheduled to meet on Thursday may overlap with the period when that bill is before the Commons. I'm not sure that's correct, but given that Thursday's hours have been changed—

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

I have a couple of closing points that are mostly administrative.

Elizabeth May mentioned a point about the bells being for 10 minutes in at Westminster. Just for your interest, one thing they have there is an apartment building for all the MPs. They have bells in the apartment building, so you can go back to your apartment, have your 8-minute bells, and still get to Westminster.

Tomorrow, as you know, in the House of Commons, we have caucus in the morning, and then it's a special day. There's a speech. The only other thing that day is question period, which will end at 4:15. We will reconvene—“unsuspend”—at 4:30, barring anything unusual, 15 minutes after question period finishes.

Then, for Thursday, once again, hopefully we'll have come to some agreement before then, but if we haven't, we will meet from 9 o'clock to 11 o'clock, with the caveat I mentioned earlier. If Bill C-33 comes before Parliament on Thursday—and for any time it does—we'll suspend so that this committee, which that bill is going to come to, can hear that debate.

Last, remember that the buses are running for one half hour from now to take you to the parking lots.

It being 12:02 a.m., we will suspend until 4:30 p.m. tomorrow.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you, Minister.

I really want to express my appreciation for your being here today.

I want to follow up on the line of questioning that my colleague David Graham had started with respect to timelines. You specifically mentioned a May 19 deadline. The committee has received some information that there may be other substantive work that we need to consider as well. I'm following this line of questioning simply because I'm trying to figure out a process for dealing with what might suddenly be a very heavy workload for all of us. I want to understand. Is your deadline of May 19 when you want us to have completed the review of the Chief Electoral Officer's report and to report that back to the House?

That is my first line of questioning. My second piece is with respect to Bill C-33. Of course, we have not yet received that piece of legislation from the House for review. Would it be helpful for us to potentially prereview it on the assumption that it will come to us fairly intact?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

The other thing too—sorry, Ms. Kim, I didn't mean to exclude you in this conversation—is that it also leads into the fact that one of the other things that Bill C-33 would do is to empower the CEO to be more involved with the educational aspect and publicizing some of the facts about voting. I guess that leads in well to allowing young people to register to vote. I commend you for that.

Ms. Kim.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

I also agree with that. I think it is very important. That's why in Bill C-33 we are proposing measures within that legislation to make the voter identification card one piece that could serve as a piece of identification in future elections. I think it's incredibly important.

I'm sure many of us in this room and in this Parliament have stories to tell of people who were turned away at the polls because they didn't have proper identification. We know that about 120,000 Canadians cited their reason for not voting as the lack of proper identification.

I think it's one way to ensure that people who have the right to vote are able to vote, and can do it as efficiently as possible.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for being here.

I want to go to Bill C-33, if I may, and focus on the substance of it. I appreciate the other parts if it, including the tabling, as Mr. Christopherson brought up. I appreciate Mr. Christopherson's comments about that, and yours as well, but I do want to talk about what this is.

To me, there are two parts to it. There are things in there that we talked about when we campaigned and in terms of what we would do as part of the mandate letter. The other part, if I can try to describe it subtly, is to “untangle the tangly bits” that were left over from the unfair elections act from the last time. I've often described it as being a solution to a problem that never existed.

One of those is the voter information card. I am a huge fan for several reasons. The median age in my riding is high. We have a lot of seniors. It's also a rural area, so a lot of people lack the identification required for addresses and so on and so forth. I'm sure a lot of the opposition would say, well, you have to have a certain amount of identification to vote. A certain amount of identification is required. That I understand. But by doing that, and by creating so many barriers, and lifting these barriers, to a point where we violated a charter right, which is your right to vote....

The voter information card was essential. Perhaps I could describe it this way. Many seniors would take this card and put it on their fridge or somewhere in the kitchen to remind them about voting. They'd rely on that so much to be able to walk into the booth and say, “I want to cast my vote”.

I appreciate that, and I'm wondering if you could comment on that.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Minister, thank you again for your attendance. I also want to thank you for the recent meet-and-greet we had in your office. It's appreciated.

I'll take a brief moment to comment on the process you're offering. I want to say publicly that I am as impressed with the change in approach with regard to the government, your ministry, and the work of this committee, as I was outraged at the way that Bill C-33 was so unceremoniously dumped on us in the House. There was a commitment made that this was going to change, and we're still in the process of getting through that, but I do want to say publicly that I've been very impressed with the attempt by the government members and you to get us back on a positive track, where we are working hand in hand, as you promised in the campaign and as is best for Parliament when we—on this committee in particular—can work that way. I want to say that I'm very impressed.

You continue, however, to load up the agenda of the committee. I want to remind you that it's going to take an even greater effort at coordinating and talking, because you're not the only source of our work. We get it from all over. Some things trump—and I refuse to stop using the word—other things, and that can slow us down on our own well-intentioned agenda. That's still going to be a struggle. There's a lot of work in front of this committee.

Again, I want to emphasize that I was incredibly outraged at what your government did with Bill C-33, and I am as impressed now with the government's recognizing they were wrong and their attempt to make it right. I hope that continues. I look forward to working on this file that is critically important for all of us.

With that, Chair, I would like to give the balance of my time to my colleague Mr. Cullen, who is also our democratic reform critic, sir.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Minister of Democratic Institutions]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's a pleasure to be back just a little over a month from the last time I was here. It's good to see all of you. I'm looking forward to this conversation as well.

Thank you for inviting me to speak to the committee again. I'm pleased to have this opportunity to appear before you today, and I'm happy to contribute to your proceedings to the best of my ability.

Yesterday, we celebrated International Women's Day. I was very proud to have been invited to speak on March 7 at the Daughters of the Vote gala. The Equal Voice organization held the event to highlight the significance of the day. The Daughters of the Vote initiative brought young women aged 18 to 23 to Parliament. They came from each of our 338 federal electoral districts to represent their community and share their vision for Canada. Yesterday, these young women had the opportunity to meet with their MP and sit at their MP's place in the House of Commons.

It was inspiring to see the House full of young women and to look into what the future holds. All of us who have the privilege to serve also have the duty to support and encourage young Canadians to engage in our democracy. In particular, this committee has the unique opportunity to reflect on how to ensure that all Canadians are best prepared and able to participate in civic life. Your study of the CEO report and its recommendations positions you as stewards and champions of the franchise. The Daughters of the Vote who are in Ottawa today, and all Canadians, are counting on your reflections.

This is why I would like to take this opportunity to thank you, specifically, for your work so far on the Chief Electoral Officer's recommendations report. I read with interest your interim report, which was tabled on Monday. I am going to spend more time reviewing it and reflecting on your recommendations as the government considers its response.

I am very happy to see that you have reached a consensus on the key recommendations that are the core of the Chief Electoral Officer's proposed voting services modernization efforts. In addition, you have collectively supported a range of other recommendations, including recommendations to improve the delivery of voting services to non-resident Canadians and enhanced information-sharing authorities to improve the quality of the national register of electors, the latter being something that may come before you for consideration as part of Bill C-33. These are important recommendations that will improve our electoral process.

There was also consensus on many of the Chief Electoral Officer's recommendations related to ensuring an accessible electoral system for electors and candidates with disabilities. Enhancing inclusion as a defining value of our democracy stands high among my priorities for the coming months and years.

I look forward to your upcoming work on the recommendations set out in the Chief Electoral Officer's report.

I'll highlight a few, I hope to hear your thoughts on the issue of the length of the election period and on the polling day, recommendations A21 and A22. These recommendations have implications for the political financing regime and the participation of Canadians in the voting process.

Recommendation A25 would address the question of partisan nominees for poll staff and promises improvements in Elections Canada's recruitment processes. In light of your support for recommendation A1, your view on this recommendation would be informative.

Recommendations A33 and A34 would provide additional tools for the Commissioner of Canada Elections. My mandate letter includes a commitment to enhance Canadians' trust in the integrity of our system, and I would value your thoughts on these recommendations.

Recommendation A39 concerns adjustments to the broadcasting arbitration regime. The way that political parties communicate with Canadians and the nature of media have changed considerably over time. These provisions have hardly been modified in recent years.

Recommendation B9 has a significant impact on gender non-conforming electors. In relation to Bill C-16, I think it warrants consideration, since equality could be ensured in all aspects of the federal government.

Recommendation B15 would affect the process in place to help electors with a disability.

Recommendations B12, B24, B18, B26, B27, and B43 are all related in different ways to the integrity of the process and Canadians' trust in that process. As trust is paramount to the success of any election and the peaceful transfer of power, I would welcome the committee's thoughtful input on these as well.

Finally, recommendation B44 raises the important issue of how we adapt to a fixed-date context for elections in a Westminster system. I would ask the committee, if you think it of merit, to reflect on how this and other recommendations are impacted, and what the challenges and opportunities are in relation to fixed-date elections in the Canadian experience.

All of these recommendations raise a variety of questions that would benefit from the expertise of this committee. They seek ways to keep our electoral laws up to date with the expectations of electors and political actors. Your considerate review of these matters is valuable.

As I noted during my last appearance, my mandate letter includes a commitment to enhance the transparency of fundraising activities. In meeting this commitment, I intend to introduce legislation that makes fundraising events public, and to require additional disclosure of who attends, and when.

We have heard Canadians' concerns in this regard, and we intend to act. I hope to introduce legislation this spring, and if referred to your committee by the House, I would very much appreciate your consideration of the bill and any recommendations you may have.

Of course, there's also Bill C-33. Your work so far on the recommendations report will well position you in considering this bill and its measures to reduce barriers to voting while enhancing the integrity of the electoral process. Bill C-33, I believe, complements the work that you are undertaking with the CEO recommendations.

The road to the 2019 election is getting ever shorter. I am committed, as I know all members of this committee are, to improving our electoral system before the next election to the benefit of all Canadians. To accomplish this goal, Canadians need us to work together. I hope to continue to receive your valuable input to inform the direction of improving our electoral process to make it accessible, efficient, and equitable for voters.

Elections Canada needs sufficient time to implement any changes made to the Canada Elections Act before the next election and would like to be election-ready well in advance of an expected writ. The more time Elections Canada has to prepare, the better.

We must also take into consideration that other legislative changes may be necessary to implement your recommendations.

The development and preparation of this bill, and the important discussions and debates in the House of Commons and Senate, shouldn't be rushed.

To give Elections Canada the time it needs, as well as to give parliamentarians the time they need, my hope would be to introduce legislation before the end of this year that would build on your hard work with respect to the Chief Electoral Officer's recommendations. It is our responsibility to take the time to get this right. It is also our responsibility to get it done. It's what Canadians expect. If the House could have your next report before the House rises for the summer, preferably by May 19, I think we would be well positioned to advance some significant reforms that would improve the electoral process for Canadians.

I am sharing my thinking with the committee because I sincerely want to work together with you. I respect this committee's independence and know the committee will set its own agenda. I hope my remarks today help provide insight to you about my thinking and perspective on the matters before this committee.

Thank you again for inviting me here today. I look forward to working with you on these important issues.

Thank you.

Democratic Reform

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Minister of Democratic Institutions]

Mr. Speaker, as I said today, it is important that all members of the House and all of Canada's political leaders do everything they can to encourage young Canadians to participate in democracy. What is more, we introduced Bill C-33, which will create a register of young Canadians between the ages of 14 and 17. We know that once young people vote once they vote for the rest of their adult lives.

We are taking steps to get young Canadians involved, and I look forward to working with my colleagues in the House in order to increase youth participation in our democracy.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Democratic Institutions]

Mr. Speaker, our government believes that electoral reform, indeed all democratic reform, should be about pursuing the most broad public interest possible. We believed and we continue to believe that potential reforms must be judged by how they will help Canadians. This is why the Prime Minister said that we are not prepared to move forward with something so fundamental as reforming our electoral system without the broad support of Canadians.

Listening to Canadians is absolutely fundamental to our role as parliamentarians, and this is why the government initiated a national consultation process on electoral reform last spring. First, we asked a special all-party committee of the House of Commons to study the issue. The special committee consulted broadly with relevant experts and organizations and conducted a national engagement process that included travelling to every province and every territory and hearing from 196 experts and 567 open-mike participants, and receiving 574 written submissions and more than 22,000 responses to its e-consultation survey.

We also asked MPs to hold their own town halls to hear the views of their constituents, and MPs held 170 such town halls. The government held public meetings in every province and every territory to hear directly from Canadians, and we sought to ensure that every Canadian could have his or her view heard through an innovative online engagement and educational tool that asked Canadians what values and what principles they wanted to see reflected in their voting system. More than 360,000 people in Canada took the time to participate and have their views heard in this important initiative, and I urge all of my fellow MPs to read the report.

As the Minister of Democratic Institutions has noted, it is clear that despite all of these important efforts to listen to Canadians, the broad consensus needed for change of this magnitude simply does not exist. The government respects and is thankful for all those Canadians who came forward and took the time to share their thoughts about our democracy and have their voices heard. When we hold public consultation we have to be ready to listen to what we hear, and we listened to what we heard.

This of course does not put an end to the important work our government is doing to strengthen our elections and build confidence in our democratic institutions, and I would like to highlight three of the government's priorities moving ahead. First, we will be continuing to move forward with Bill C-33 to make it easier for eligible voters to participate in elections as well as to improve electoral integrity. Second, the minister will be working with her colleagues, the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness to help protect our voting system from the threat of hacking. Third, notwithstanding that Canada already has one of the best-regulated political finance regimes in the world, we will take steps to make fundraising even more open and even more transparent.

These are only a few of the items in the mandate letter of the Minister of Democratic Institutions. Our hard-working colleagues on the procedure and House affairs committee are also doing important work to review the Chief Electoral Officer's recommendations for improving the electoral process.

Clearly, there is still much work to do to further enhance our electoral process, and I look forward to supporting these efforts to reinforce Canada's strong democratic foundations.

Opposition Motion—Commitments Regarding Electoral Reform

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank all of my colleagues who have taken part in this debate, which is a very important one.

I also thank the hon. member of the opposition for having raised this question. I well know that his dedication to the issue of electoral reform is sincere. I congratulate him for his dedication to the vitality of our democracy. I must say that all of the parties share that dedication.

First of all I would like to acknowledge the fact that, in my riding of Hull—Aylmer, some of my fellow citizens are going to be disappointed by the lack of consensus in Parliament. I would like to take formal note of their disappointment.

I must also say that the issue of electoral reform is not confined to changing the voting system. There are many other important steps we could take.

We need only think back to a few years ago when the previous government tabled Bill C-23, or the Fair Elections Act. We all know that there were numerous measures in that bill. We know there was a fairly big consensus in our Parliament on making certain changes. I would like to raise a few of those changes, and also to congratulate the Minister of Democratic Institutions for having proposed them in her speech.

I shall start by setting forth a few principles.

Canadian democracy, at its core, requires and relies upon our ability to set aside partisan interests and if we disagree to disagree honestly, but to have an honest debate, a respectful debate, especially on matters that affect us all.

As I said, I had a town hall in my riding of Hull—Aylmer. I would like to thank the 35 residents who showed up at this town hall, who joined me at the Université du Québec en Outaouais to discuss this issue. It was a great discussion and it was a valuable one. As I reported to the special committee on electoral reform, “the participants at the consultation held a diverse set of views” and that my constituents wanted to continue to improve and evolve our democracy.

That is a fair discussion of what we had. That is a fair summary of what we had that night. That is why I am so grateful to my constituents for participating. This why I feel there are so many other elements that we can pursue to improve the electoral system.

Let us talk about some of those issues.

As I said, Bill C-33 contains amendments that are intended to make the views of young Canadians heard and to indicate what we want to change in the regulations.

I would like to focus first on one of those measures, which consists of establishing a register of future electors, in which Canadian citizens 14 to 17 years of age may consent to be included. That measure will reflect the recommendation made by the Chief Electoral Officer after the last election, and goes even further.

The Chief Electoral Officer had asked that he be authorized to retain information about persons 16 and 17 years of age so that they could later be added to the national register of electors.

I would note that this measure also reflects one of the recommendations made by the Special Committee on Electoral Reform. If it receives the support of the House, this legislation will be a formidable tool for young Canadians and for Elections Canada.

Elections Canada could then communicate with young people in order to register them in the national register of electors. In addition, students could be registered in advance, in anticipation of their turning 18.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Humber River—Black Creek has been a mentor to me since I have had the privilege of joining her in the House.

The procedure and House affairs, the committee on which I sit, will be dealing with many things moving forward. As we know, we already have Bill C-33 before the House, and there are important elements in that which would certainly strengthen participation among our citizenry. In the minister's mandate letter are issues with respect to fundraising. That issue will likely emerge in legislation. We already have some of the toughest laws in the world on political fundraising, but this would make them even more stringent. We are going to be bringing forward other changes, for example, with respect to dealing with cybersecurity threats, again which is found in the minister's mandate letter.

Those are important issues that Canadians should have confidence in and will help address and alleviate any of the concerns they have about their participation.