Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2006

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

I think having the date of birth on the official list that will be held by the returning officer will give us a considerable improvement over the present system.

It's not just a question of the charter; it's a question of balancing and being proportional as to what information we want to release about people. It seems to me that providing the date of birth on the official list helps identify, and I think that helps to improve the integrity of the system.

In my opinion, there wasn't as strong an argument for individuals' birthdates to be made available to basically everyone else, which is what the case would be. Quite apart from any legal requirements, I believe some Canadians--not all, but some--are sensitive to the fact that their birthdates would be known. Unless it is absolutely necessary for it to be public knowledge, it's my inclination not to make it public. That's why we differentiated in the lists that would be provided to political parties and the official list that would be kept by the returning officer. That was the reason for the distinction.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much.

We'll now move on to Mr. Godin.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome, minister. During your opening remarks, you said that the committee had reported to the House and that you had responded with a bill. You said that we should work together because this is a minority government. I don't think this is how things work in reality. Quite sincerely—

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

I'm hoping it happens that way.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

I want your hopes to start to go down a little bit.

A bill is important, because if it's adopted, it becomes law in Canada and then we have to live with it. This has to be taken seriously.

When the committee did its work leading to the report, almost everything was done in camera. We worked in camera half the time. The report was drafted in camera and finally, this ended up before Parliament. Now, you're responding with a bill.

This isn't how things should be done. Normally, the minister responds to the report, there are discussions and sometimes a bill appears. I appreciate the fact that you tabled a bill, but certain Canadians would like to express their views on this bill and want to send us their comments. We can't simply pass a bill and then end up with a result that we'll regret later.

It's therefore my opinion that the bill has to be examined in-depth. For example, when you talk about our first nations, Aboriginals and the homeless, we don't want a bill that will...

It's been said that certain people circumvented the system and voted three or four times. Mr. Kingsley told this committee that no such incident occurred, that this is just hearsay. No one was able to prove cases of fraud. Some said they did it, but we don't have any concrete cases.

What I fear, minister is that we're removing the right to vote from poor people. Take the example of the homeless. They don't work and therefore they don't need a driving licence with a photograph. They don't have 10 credit cards and this and that. I'm not compromising myself; I'm just saying that we reported to Parliament, you prepared a bill and now we have to consider it. We have to remain open to suggestions. At the end of the process, it may remain the same or the committee can come to the conclusion that it forgot something or that the witnesses convinced it of something.

Do you agree with me? Do you think that we must be cautious and act appropriately if we want to pass a bill?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

In your last comment, that you may have missed something or that it may not be perfect, I think you're actually being too modest, Mr. Godin, and I think the report was an excellent report. I was impressed by the fact that it had the support of all four political parties.

I can tell you, as far as how quickly our response was, I think it's a measure of how impressed we were and how thorough we believed that report was that we tabled legislation. We had it for some time ourselves. We looked very carefully at your report. We didn't do it overnight. We didn't get the report and then have the bill. We tabled our response after due consideration.

You ask, how do minority parliaments work? I think this is one of the best examples of how a minority parliament should work. I think the government can and should have a look at any report that comes from a committee.

Let me tell you this. I was involved with, as I indicated to you, dozens of committee reports on all justice legislation from the middle of 1984 through to the end of 1993, and I don't remember an instance where a government, whether I was a member of it or not, faithfully responded in terms of legislation to the unanimous report, or indeed to any report of a committee.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Chair, I understand all of that. But I want you to understand the concept under which the report was done. Most of the report was done in camera. Canadians didn't know what we were doing. Now Canadians are worried about it. We are receiving calls from B.C., we're receiving calls from different places in the country, we're receiving calls from chiefs of first nations, saying “I'm worried about it”. Okay?

It's in that respect that I'm saying it.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

I wasn't privy to how you came to the report. I am only saying that when we had a look at the results, again, I will tell you that we were impressed.

You also went on to say that there are few or, in some cases, no proven problems with fraud being committed. Part of what we are trying to do here is to stay ahead of the curve. I believe Canada has the best electoral system in the world, but to maintain that integrity we have to be sometimes proactive. Again, this bill is a reasonable response. In fact, it's a faithful reproduction, quite frankly, of the recommendations you made.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Don't you agree with me that the goal is to have Canadians vote?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

There is no question, Monsieur Godin.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Okay, that's the goal; we want all Canadians to vote.

We have to take into consideration that not everyone wants to disclose their birth date. Personally, I wouldn't want to give my birth date to some political party, including my own. My birth date is something personal.

We're asked for our birth date too often for identification purposes. When you report a lost credit card, representatives of the bank involved ask for a birth date. Therefore there are people who know our birth date, in addition to our credit card number. That's almost an identification. Maybe that's why people get nervous.

When you said that a person could use a credit card together with a

a “utility bill”--what do you mean by that? Is that the bill from New Brunswick Housing or New Brunswick energy?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

In Madam Jennings' case, she indicated the individual might have a status card as an aboriginal Canadian. I said something as simple as a utility bill could be used in conjunction with that to identify his or her place of residence.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

It would be in conjunction. Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much.

We're out of time on that first round. Thank you, colleagues.

We'll begin our second round now. The second round will be for five minutes. We will begin with Monsieur Proulx.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

I'm back, Minister, on this thing with what Mr. Guimond has qualified as a “bingo card”.

Unfortunately, the figures given to you by Mr. Kingsley are based on the wrong description of what we explained to him. He's referring to the possibility or...the use of photocopiers in every voting station; that's not at all what we had explained to him, and it's not at all the system that is being used.

We will have witnesses at our next meetings; we have a witness from the Quebec election system, and we also have a witness who's been summoned from the City of Gatineau, which uses the system.

I just want to take two minutes of the committee's time so that you realize Mr. Kingsley was wrong.

What we're looking for is a system in which we have, as you were mentioning, what we may call voter tracking. As voters proceed during the day, on a multi-copy form, whether it be carbon or non-carbon, the clerk or somebody else--but the clerk would do this--would strictly check off the numbers. We call it a bingo card because we use little cards that are the same size as a bingo card, and they're numbered from 1 to 300. As the voters come in, the clerk would just check off voter number 34 or voting number 56--whatever--and then every hour or at a predetermined time you'd pull off these copies and give them to each representative of each candidate. Then they come back to our election office, “our” meaning the partisan election office of each party. This way we can do the tracking of the voters as the day continues.

We will be having witnesses, as I said, and you will realize that the system is so much simpler than what Mr. Kingsley has been proposing. Whether he misunderstood or whether he wanted to misunderstand, I don't know, but we'll explain through these witnesses that it's very straightforward and very simple.

I wish we could have your commitment today that you will look a second time at this, based on the testimonies we will be getting next week. Then you can see on your own, not through Mr. Kingsley's eyes, that this system is fairly simple and not that expensive.

Thank you.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

I'd like to say a few words, Mr. Chair.

I don't think Mr. Kingsley would want to misunderstand. I know Mr. Kingsley and I think he's a respected public servant. I think he does his very best, and he has had an excellent record of public service. An individual, including me or you, can misunderstand something; I don't think we would “want to” misunderstand anything. I just wanted to make that clear. Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

We're going to move to Mr. Lukiwski, please.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Minister. I have just a couple of comments, and then I'd like your observations, perhaps, on my comments with respect to some of the observations of Monsieur Godin about perhaps opening this bill up to scrutiny from members of the general public now that the bill has been presented.

My first observation is that I'm not sure whether there will ever be an electoral system in Canada, federal or provincial, that is absolutely perfect, that comforts everyone, that will never have a disenfranchised voter. The best we can do is to bring forward a system that deals as best we can with most of the problems we've experienced in the past, and I think this bill basically does that.

I think we've had extensive consultations within this committee, in camera and in public. Most of the initiatives put forward, and most of the amendments contained in our report and captured in your bill, will mean that we are going to have a new electoral process in the system that is better than the previous. I think that's a step in the right direction.

The other point that I think we all agreed upon as committee members is that we wanted to try to have as much due diligence as we could, being mindful at the same time that, as a minority government, we could be experiencing an election at any time. We could be seeing an election, if you believe the political pundits and prognosticators, as early as next spring. I would not like to think that we would still have this bill in committee before the next federal election, because I think there are distinct and very meaningful improvements in the bill that you have presented.

So with respect to Monsieur Godin's comments, that perhaps we should bring this bill forward and allow members of the general public, whether they be first nations communities or those who deal with homeless shelters.... While I'm not opposed to that in principle, I would hate to think that by continuing on with an examination of this bill, which is a marked improvement over the past system, we would delay its implementation.

First, Minister, do you share those views? And if we got out of this committee today with this bill intact, as presented, how long do you think it might take before we could implement the changes contained in the bill? Would we be ready for an election by next spring?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

That's a good question, Mr. Lukiwski.

Again, I made the point that your report was an impressive one. It was wide-ranging, and it covered a lot of areas that needed to be covered in our electoral system. We applauded it when this particular bill came forward.

Every committee is the master of its own agenda. You of course hear, and it's quite proper that you would hear, from people who have something to say, just as I'm sure you heard from people when you were putting together the committee. You would have had quite a bit of input, I'm sure, from various sources. So of course you will want to hear from individuals.

That said, I threw out the challenge that this seems to me to be a faithful reproduction of the recommendations that came from your committee. This isn't something the government dreamed up on its own. To that extent, it seems to me that it should get a favourable response, I'm guessing, from this committee. Again, that said, time and tide waits for no man.

Wasn't that the expression from the 19th century--from Dickens, I believe?

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Excuse me for interrupting, Minister, but I guess one point that I wanted your comments or observations on had to do with the speed of this.

I know, Marlene, I'm out of a job now; this is my own minister.

As everyone here knows, just because it passes committee, goes into the House, and passes the House, that doesn't mean it's going to be law. We have to go through the other place, the other house, the Senate. We saw with Bill C-2--that was not dealt with by this committee but by a special legislative committee--how long it took, and we're still not finished that process. The Senate took an extraordinarily long time, in my view, to bring it back to the House, with a lot of amendments. I would hate to think that this bill would be stalled in the Senate and then not be in effect before the next federal election.

I'd just like your comments on that.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Well, that's very likely, Mr. Lukiwski. If the bill gets delayed long enough, it probably won't see the light of day, certainly for another election.

The bill would go into effect six months after royal proclamation, unless it's implemented earlier by the Chief Electoral Officer. I suppose that would be an interesting question to ask him, whether it would be possible to shorten that timeframe.

But again, I'm hoping that the matter will proceed expeditiously through this committee. I hope it will proceed through third reading at the House of Commons, and I hope we get a break in the Senate on this and that they have a look at it. I'm sure they'll want to examine it, but I hope they pass it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you, colleagues.

Madam Picard, please.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Minister, I would like you to confirm that you took the decision of establishing a unique and permanent identifier for each elector. I want to make sure I understood properly.

Secondly, I'd like to talk to you about the bingo card, which I have an copy here that I could give to your staff. I don't know how the chief electoral officer arrived at the decision to establish such a system which costs $23.5 million. This is a card that could be used with carbon paper. The clerk, who is already paid by Elections Canada could fill it out, thus eliminating the need to have representatives at the tables.

Regardless, the Quebec Chief Electoral Officer is supposed to come and explain to us how this bingo or representation card works. I'd like to inform you that this system will not cost $23.5 million. I don't know how the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada arrived at that amount. He's not familiar with the bingo card. How come he gave you that figure?

You will get further clarification when the Chief Electoral Officer of Quebec comes to explain the card. Suffice it to say for the moment that this is a score card that a clerk in an office, at a table, could easily fill out. That could be part of her job.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

I know that the job of the poll clerks and the deputy returning officer is a busy one on election day. Just from my own experience, it would seem that to have another procedure in place would take extra time and effort. But I can't speak for the estimates of the Chief Electoral Officer. Please feel free to mention that to him.

With respect to my opening comments about the identifier, the legislation you had before is permissive, that the Chief Electoral Officer “may” do this. I threw it open to you that if you wanted to make that a requirement, we would look positively on that. But again, we would look to the committee for some direction on that. You may want to proceed with it.

I'm quite interested in your area. For someone who has been “dragging” people to the polls for the last 30 years in every election in my area of Ontario, this is a fascinating new wrinkle on this. If it works, I'm at least intrigued on the part of a candidate.

But in any case, I'll let you ask that question to Mr. Kingsley.

Thank you.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you very much.