Thank you very much, and thank you to my colleague Mr. Godin for allowing me to be here as well—I'm not usually on this committee.
I am very concerned about some of the proposals that have been put forward.
In your brief, Mr. Kingsley, you talk about the ID provision and that it will constitute a major change in the functioning of the polls, and I would certainly agree with that. You also talk about the judgment that would be applied and whether it would be consistent—we're talking about 65,000 people. But I think what you haven't referenced, and what I would have a huge concern about, is that if we move to this kind of system we are potentially disenfranchising thousands of people, mostly low-income people or homeless people, who for one reason or another don't have ID.
In Vancouver East, for example, as you know, we have relied on statutory declarations and we have lawyers on election day who come from various organizations—it's very non-partisan—and that statutory declaration has been sufficient for the returning officer to accept that the person is who they are, they have an address, they have no other ID. Mr. Owen talks about remote communities, aboriginal communities, and I'm very concerned that with the requirements around ID, particularly if we're saying you need one photograph ID but otherwise it's got to be two pieces of ID, we will be in effect disenfranchising many people in low-income communities. So my question is, are we applying the right tool to the problem that's been identified? If the issue here is multiple voting or multiple vouching, then surely there must be a mechanism to deal with that, rather than penalizing people who legitimately don't have ID and spend hours in lineups waiting to vote.
I've sent you cases over a number of elections of problems that we've had, and it is a major issue. I'm very concerned that if we introduce this as a new principle in our elections we'll really be changing not just the functioning but how we enfranchise people. I'd like you to respond to that.