Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Murray Mollard. I am the executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. I would like to thank the committee for the invitation to speak.
The association, as some of you may know, is over 43 years old and works on a large range of civil liberties issues, but the right to vote and political rights are at the heart, I would suggest, of the work we do. Democracy and making effective people's freedoms within a democracy are core principles and values, which the association strives to protect.
We see this issue with respect to Bill C-31. The impact it will have in terms of preventing eligible voters from exercising their fundamental right to vote is a top priority for the association.
I wanted to do something for the committee besides just sitting here and asserting that there will be people who are disenfranchised. I made an effort to contact a variety of social service agencies within the area that Tina Marie has referred to--the downtown eastside--that provide direct services for clientele and for marginalized people, homeless people, drug-addicted people, transient people, and people with mental health difficulties. I want to read into the record some of those letters. They have been sent to the committee, but I just want to quickly read some of those.
The first letter is from, Ethel Whitty, the director of the Carnegie Community Centre.
Dear Mr. Goodyear,
I am writing to express my concern regarding Bill C-31.
Thousands of individuals in the city of Vancouver are without proper identification due to poverty, illness or disability or having no access to a stable address. Many of them are known to their neighbours and the present system of verification of identity during election registration allows them to exercise their right to vote.
Changes to this system that would demand two pieces of identification for registration to vote would effectively disenfranchise them. I urge you to seriously consider the consequences of enacting Bill C-31.
This is a letter from Karen O' Shannacery,the executive director of the Lookout Emergency Aid Society:
I read with concern that the Act may change to require either proof of identification or require someone to take his or her oath as well as be vouched for by someone with id. This will place an unreasonable hardship on our residents and clientele, and will almost certainly eliminate the opportunity for the vast majority of them to vote.
I won't read all of this letter, but I'll read the concluding paragraph:
We believe that our residents and clientele should have as much right to vote as anyone else, and that means we have a responsibility to make voting accessible to them. People should be able to attest to their identity and eligibility to vote through a statutory declaration. We urge you to not implement the contemplated amendments, and use this alternative process.
This letter is from the executive director of the Motivation, Power & Achievement Society, Roberta Chapman:
MPA wishes to go on record as opposing Bill C-31.
This bill will make it extremely difficult if not impossible for those who are homeless to vote. The homeless are one of the most vulnerable populations with regards to social service funding reductions and should be able to exhibit that by voting.
MPA believes that “statutory declarations” are the appropriate path for those who are transient or homeless. We need to be encouraging everyone to vote and that includes homeless people. Many of the homeless are stricken with mental illness as a part of their difficult lives. This Bill only serves to remove them even farther from the voting process, giving them less say rather than more. Who is more compromised than the homeless population, and if not them, who will speak on their behalf in the vote?
Again, I won't read from the whole letter. This letter is from Jean Swanson, the co-coordinator of the Carnegie Community Action Project:
I am writing on behalf of the Carnegie Community Action Project to inform you that the requirements of Bill C-31 for 2 pieces of ID for voting eligibility will completely disenfranchise thousands of people in our neighbourhood....
This provision must be stopped if we are to call Canada a democracy.
I think there are considerable concerns by those who actually work directly with and will, as Tina Marie has also attested, know the very significant problems that marginalized people have in obtaining ID and retaining ID.
Our association believes that there should be amendments to the bill. We would urge you to consider carefully and implement provisions. For example, there could be amendment to proposed subsection 43.1(2) of the bill that would allow a sworn statutory declaration to establish the elector's name, eligibility, and residency. The act could also be changed. There would need to be another amendment in paragraph 161(1)(a) that would recognize that the statutory declaration could be used.
We note that the statutory declaration at this moment is reliant upon voluntary lawyers to come forward and provide their services. So it's not necessarily a holistic solution to this problem. We would urge you, for example, to consider permitting your deputy returning officers to take an oath, but not with the vouching system. I know Tina Marie maybe in the questions can speak of her experience of how the vouching system is ineffective because of the problems of these individuals not necessarily knowing others who would have to be on the registered voters list and have the requisite ID as well. Although we understand the reason why you put it in there was as a safeguard, we see the vouching as really a barrier to providing and ensuring people who are eligible to vote actually vote.