It would be true to say that you have finished for the elections of 1979— because it's the first one you cite—1980, 1984, 1988, 1993, 1997, and 2000. That's seven elections, and out of all of those, we had four prosecutions. That's less than one per election. You can see why I'm structuring my question this way, of course.
The subsection 511(1) of the act says, “If the Commissioner believes on reasonable grounds that an offence under this Act has been committed and is of the view that the public interest justifies it, the Commissioner may institute a prosecution or cause one to be instituted.”
It makes me wonder, looking at the small number of prosecutions that have been successfully carried out.... You didn't mention if there were unsuccessful prosecutions. There may have been some. I don't know. I'd like to actually find that out. In fact, I'm asking you to submit that information to us.
But coming back to my main point, obviously none of us really believes that there's an average of one case of electoral fraud every election and a half or two elections. Is there a problem in that you are unable to get information? You have to have reasonable grounds--grounds to which you can assign a reason. Is it the case that the way the law is structured, we are being unsuccessful at capturing examples of fraudulent voting that must be going on to some degree?
Perhaps it's not an epidemic, although there has been some assertion in the public that there is an epidemic. But let's say it's not. Let's say it's even going on at some low level. There's so little activity going on in prosecution that it makes me think there must be difficulty from your point of view in actually finding reasonable grounds. That suggests to me that it's one of those acts for which there doesn't seem to be any paper trail that gets left afterwards.
Of course I'm working up to asking whether we can find ways, or if we ought to be looking to find ways, to change the legislation so as to make this easier to pursue in cases where it does occur.