Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Dec. 5th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much, Mr. Proulx.

We're done with that round.

Mr. Reid, please, seven minutes.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to start with a question to Mr. Hepburn, and then I'd like to go to Mr. Nothing.

I mention this in advance, Mr. Hepburn, so you'll understand that if I have to cut you off a little bit, it's because I want to leave time for Mr. Nothing. They only give me seven minutes.

One of the things that occurred to me in reading subclause 143(2) in the draft legislation is that it talks about one piece of ID with a photo of the elector and their name and address, or two pieces of identification establishing the elector's name and address as authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer. One of the questions I think we'll want to ask the Chief Electoral Officer is whether he would interpret this to mean that if I have a piece of ID with my name and my photo, and another piece of ID with my address, it would do. I think people have perhaps been interpreting this restrictively, and we don't know if Mr. Kingsley will have a similarly restrictive interpretation.

My own interpretation, if I were in his position, would be that having someone's student card with their photo and name on it, along with some type of information with their name and address, the two together accomplish the goal. Similarly, having a bus pass with my name and my photo on it, along with something else with my name and my address, together would serve the purpose.

If that is the case—and you can correct me if I'm wrong—I think those two options together would virtually eliminate the problem you're describing. I would be wrong if there were some universities still issuing student IDs without photos on them or, I guess, if there were bus passes without photos.

You can maybe enlighten me as to whether this sort of situation exists any more, or whether these things pretty well universally include photos.

[Rob Hepburn]

As best as I know, most student unions, or most institutions, do issue photo ID. There might be some cases out there where they don't. But the situation you described, where it could be one piece of photo ID without an address and one piece, presumably, of correspondence, with their address while they're at school or with their permanent residence, I think would suffice.

But as you alluded to, under the current drafting of this bill, it would be up to the Chief Electoral Officer to make that distinction. I'd like to see the language a bit stronger in the bill, so that it's not left up to that Chief Electoral Officer, and it's the Government of Canada that says whether this suffices.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Yes, there are one or two members of this committee who have expressed reservations in the past about leaving too much discretion to the Chief Electoral Officer, so you may not be alone in that sentiment. But we are going to have him in on Thursday, I think, and we'll get a chance to ask him this question. Perhaps his response will indicate whether it's necessary to take the additional steps you've suggested of legislating it, or whether we're safe. I simply throw that out because I can see how, if you read this, you could get worried. It is a relevant concern to have.

I wanted to ask Mr. Nothing about a number of problems he described, which struck me as being very legitimate. I confess to not having a great deal of personal experience with aboriginal communities that are, I guess, fly-in communities, or reachable only by air. I was trying to think of a parallel situation from my own experience, and the best thing I could come up with—and this is probably not a very good parallel, but it's the best thing I could think of—is that in the area I represent, we have rural routes with a large number of houses along a road, for example, where mail is addressed to John Smith, Rural Route 3, Smiths Falls. That means there's a particular route the postman drives. There are at least three of those routes, and Rural Route 3 is the one this particular postman drives, and John Smith lives on the route. Of course, the problem is that you have John Smith Jr., John Smith Sr., and then there are cousins who live down the road, whose names are also John Smith--I, II, and III, and those kinds of things.

It's a problem for us, I can tell you. Lately, to solve the problem, Canada Post has encouraged us to use 911 locator numbers posted in front of each house as the address, and we're gradually resolving a problem.

In thinking this through, it occurred to me that you must get mail on reserves where people have the same name, and they must have some way of distinguishing whether a piece of mail is for person A, person B, or person C, all of whom have the same name. I'm just wondering what that way is. Perhaps we can try to incorporate it, to ensure that at least one of the problems you're referring to is resolved.

[William Nothing]

Most of the communities get their mail at the Hudson Bay store. As you say, it's all one address. People with similar names.... I guess the big manager, or whatever, eventually gets to know people in terms of who gets what mail: John Sr. gets an old age pension, so he knows where to put that, and that kind of thing. If somebody sends something, I think they have to give it to one guy to open, or the individual comes in and identifies it. Sometimes it's a mail order or something. They get by after a while of knowing the individuals in the community, because they're fairly small.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Could I just ask one other question? It occurred to me that they're small communities and that there would always be one poll per community. The issue of having someone vouch for other people would be, I'm imagining, less of a problem in one of these communities than it would be, say, in a downtown urban area. If you're on the list and I'm not on the list, you can vouch for me, and as long as we have enough people on the list, the vouching could take care of everybody in the community, I think. I could be wrong. Is the number of people on the voters list typically small enough, as a percentage, that that wouldn't work as a way of resolving the problem of making sure that everybody can exercise his or her franchise?

[William Nothing]

Part of the problem is that you can vouch for one person. Are you allowed to vouch for more than one person?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

No.

[William Nothing]

I think that's where some of the problem comes in, especially when people are out of the community, are out hunting. So you end up with maybe only four people that can do the vouching, and you have five or six people that need to vote. You could have some problems. I think the big thing is for our elderly people who don't have ID. It's not different when you have, say, a federal election or even provincial election compared to our own elections. We have the problem of on and off reserve.

I'll tell you what happens in my community. I live in Thunder Bay, and we have elections in Bearskin Lake, and I'm required to phone the radio station to give them my name and tell them who I'm voting for. I don't know if they do it right or not. I'm assuming that they're honest.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much.

That round is up. I let that go a little bit longer because I thought that answer was very important to get out.

Mr. Guimond, you have seven minutes.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Guimond will be Mrs. Picard.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Oh, Mrs. Picard.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Chairman, I would like to have a clarification from Mrs. Carroll about some of the answers to our questions.

I took note of the obstacles you mentioned about the voting process for homeless persons. I know that voting is something that requires good information and must be done in a responsible manner. I know that homeless persons sometimes do not have ID cards. I'm all for opening the voting process to more people because it is the democratic right of every citizen.

I also know that the objective of the bill is to prevent fraud as much as possible. There is fraud everywhere. Sometimes, organizers will bribe groups of people to make them all vote for a candidate instead of another. With this bill, the rules will be tightened since people will have to provide a piece of identification with a photograph, which will prevent this distorsion of our democracy and of the integrity of the process.

What steps could you recommend to us -- or to the Chief Electoral Officer -- in older to make absolutely sure that the integrity of the voting process is protected?

Very often, homeless people are referred to by their first name or by a derivative of their first name. How can one be sure of their family name? Do they receive social assistance? Do they have some source of income that would make their identification possible? Would someone in the agency providing services to them be able to swear an oath on the Bible or to make a statutory declaration every time a homeless person comes to the polling station, in order to confirm his or her identity? How could we ensure that the person voting is entitled to vote? My point here is not to prevent anyone from voting but to ensure the integrity of the process.

The intent of the bill is precisely to avoid fraud because it appears everywhere. There are some dishonest people who will vote two or three times or groups who will try to have people vote two or three times.

How could we avoid that and identify homeless persons? Should we create a voting card for everyone? Even then, some people might lose their card. I'm just trying to find a solution.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Order.

I'm sorry, Madame Picard, I'm just trying to keep folks quiet. If you could point the microphone towards you, it would be helpful.

Thank you. My apologies.

[Barbara Carroll]

Yes, I would understand any government would be concerned about fraud in any election process. To make sure things like that don't happen, Canada has travelled all over the world to supervise elections in much more critical circumstances than we have in a sophisticated western society. I'm surprised we're not learning any lessons from some of those experiences to reflect in this bill.

You can bring in a mechanism whereby.... I have professional credentials. I'm not prepared to put those on the line for anybody. I also receive various levels of government funding that prohibit me from explicitly involving myself in politics at a particular level with a particular candidacy. It is my job, and I am expected by the City of Ottawa to be a source of education, a source of awareness, to highlight where there is no accessibility or there are problems and barriers for people, and to try to either resolve those myself or bring them forward. That probably is the same for people who work with the homeless, so several checks and balances are in place.

If you made a process whereby people have to identify them as a way to vouch and have to come through an organization, those organizations will not be willing to risk their very existence to perpetrate frauds of any kind. It would be a great help because we have people who move a lot. I don't have homeless families I'm in contact with on a daily basis, but I certainly have people who move. We have a very high rate of turnover in social housing, so it can be very difficult and frustrating.

The voting process is a fragile process. One of the greatest gifts you can have in a democratic society is the right to vote. I spend a lot of time talking to people who have had their lives threatened in other countries over voting. We have to get their courage back to vote. We have to encourage them to believe that what they do today is important for their children.

We're talking about youth having the ability to vote. That's building a lifetime of participation in the very life and fabric of your community, so we want to get mechanisms in this bill that will help us move that process forward.

I don't like the latitude of the Chief Electoral Officer to pick and choose documents. You have to have something more explicit there to get at what Mr. Reid is saying he wants to get at, make that explicit so people can't play with those kinds of things. With a little more thought, a process can be put in place that would allow a great many people, who are either put off by process or are completely disenfranchised and can't meet these requirements, to get past that. One person vouching for one person isn't going to do it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Dewar, please.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our guests for their presentations. It was extremely enlightening for me. I value very much the experience you have on the ground.

Just for the record, Chair, one of the things I'd like to state at the beginning is--and I am subbing on this committee--the origins of this bill came from a report to this committee, and then there was the response to that report. I didn't know a bill was forthcoming so quickly. We're seeing some of the problems with the bill in terms of some of the unintended consequences we're hearing today. I want to state for the record that I think this was a rushed process.

I've heard it stated before that we all agreed to this. I think we all agreed to the fact that a report was done; I don't think we all agreed that this bill needed to be done so quickly. I would submit that if we wanted to do this well, the bill should have been done more thoroughly and there should have been some travel involved to talk to people. Were any comparisons done with other jurisdictions, be they provinces or other countries? I know that's the purpose of what we're doing now, but in terms of the origins of this bill, I think it would have been better if we had done our homework at the front end and not in the midst of the bill.

That said, the presentations were terrific and helpful.

I'll start with you, Mr. Hepburn. You said you had some concerns around delegation of authority and who gets to decide what is valid and what isn't. Can you give me a specific example of your concerns in terms of who has the jurisdiction over this and how that might be a problem in terms of the people you represent?

[Rob Hepburn]

If the sovereignty rests with the Parliament of Canada and, in this age of accountability we're now in, with the Federal Accountability Act, making sure that when something is written into law the law is carried out appropriately is tricky when you have laws that are so vague. For instance, you have laws that say you need two pieces of authorized identification. What is authorized? Well, I'll go ask this person. This person is not elected. This person doesn't sit in the House. He can't answer questions in question period. That's a real concern.

With all due respect to the current office holder in that position, whether it's the Chief Electoral Officer or some other agent of the government, ultimately they should have some very clear guidelines as to what types of activity are acceptable, or in this case, what types of identification are acceptable.

Again, with due respect to the current office holder, the Canadian Federation of Students has made efforts to create situations where more students can vote. For example, in the January 2006 election, we made a very concentrated effort to get more polling stations on campus, and even in residences. We have some residences that house 2,000 to 3,000 people, which is probably about five times larger than some other polling districts within electoral ridings. The Chief Electoral Officer simply said he was sorry but that someone had already drawn lines on the map and they couldn't put one there. It would have been nice if there were some recourse to the Parliament of Canada to say “Look, these students aren't voting”. It would be helpful if this were the case.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I'll just turn to you, Mary-Martha, and your comments around the second point you made, and a recommendation that subsection 55(3) remain in the Elections Act. You were specific about the experiences that people bring to this country and our communities and the trust that they have in the state. You would like to see that subsection remain. Could you just expand a bit as to why you think that is important?

[Mary-Martha Hale]

By removing that clause, you're basically saying that requirement would not be in the act any longer. The requirement for the information to be used only in developing a list for an election or a referendum would no longer be a requirement.

I remember very clearly when Elections Canada started doing the perpetual enumeration system and using the income tax reporting to facilitate that. I remember being promised at that time that this information would only be used for the preparation of a list. By taking this clause out, it is saying to Canadians, “Well, we promised that to get it going, but now that we've got it going, we're going to take it out so we can use the information for other things”.

There have been a lot of comments in the media about the use of information. We just had the Maher Arar inquiry, where information was used about him. It certainly wasn't election information, but it was information that was used in a way that ended up being quite difficult for him.

The people in the homeless population who don't have a lot of power and control over their information might not understand, or they might not be prepared to share their information. That would then prevent them from engaging in the electoral process.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I think I'm hearing from all of you that one of the solutions for this is not in fact in the bill; it's the enumeration we used to have before the centralized voters list. That is, going door to door, or going to agencies, and doing a proper, thorough enumeration, face to face with people. Do you think that would be a good start?

[Mary-Martha Hale]

That is one of the things we have been engaging in at the centre.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Yes, you've been doing it.

[Mary-Martha Hale]

We've been doing it.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Yes, as opposed to Elections Canada.