Thank you very much.
My name is Scott Allardyce. I am the founder of the Canadian Disability Alliance. We are an advocacy group for people with disabilities. You can find us on Facebook. We have about 1,300 members across the country. We've existed since 2009. We don't support any political party and we're not opposed to any political party.
We've come up with five recommendations. I'll go through them very quickly. Even though I know the committee's mandate is to examine PR or other forms of electoral change, we would also like to impress upon the committee....
I think the previous panellists who were at the table with you talked about some of the barriers we face as people with disabilities. We would like to see the voting method changed to allow people to vote with other than the paper ballot. My recommendations, which I'll give to the clerk on my way out, spell out all the different examples we give.
We would also like Elections Canada to look at how polling stations are chosen to ensure they're as accessible as possible.
The most important thing is that we believe that Elections Canada should establish an accessibility ombudsman, so that when people with disabilities have difficulty in voting or difficulty at the polling place, there is a specific contact they can reach out to at Elections Canada to say, “Here are the problems and I couldn't vote” or “I felt uncomfortable in voting”.
Those are basically the recommendations we have.
I'd like to thank all the members very much. I think what you do is great. I know it's hard work. I wish you luck in your deliberations. Thank you very much.