Evidence of meeting #60 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was election.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Van Loan Conservative York—Simcoe, ON
No, it would not be exactly like a polling day itself. It would have the same attributes—
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
Marcel Proulx Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
Excuse me, Minister. I couldn't hear you because of other conversations. Would you mind starting again, please?
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Van Loan Conservative York—Simcoe, ON
No problem. It would not be exactly the same as election day. It would have the attributes of an advance polling day. The one way in which it would be the same as the general election day would be that the number and location of advance polling stations would be significantly expanded. However, the hours of operation would be the same hours of operation that would apply to an advance poll, namely, those from 12 until 8 p.m. in that time zone, wherever they were, rather than the staggered hours, for example.
There are also other legal attributes that relate to an advance poll that would apply. So with the exception of the number of locations, it would be an advance poll.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Van Loan Conservative York—Simcoe, ON
That's the only thing that makes it the same as a general election day. All the other attributes—
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Marcel Proulx Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
It's enough, isn't it? Call it what you want, it's a second election day, a day before.
Okay. So what you're doing in fact is sucking and blowing at the same time, because what you're saying is that if the election is on a Monday, there are a lot of people who cannot vote because they're not available on a Monday, but they'd be available on the Sunday. By adding the Sunday, you're actually tackling the problem of people who say, “Sunday is a religious day. We don't want to vote on Sunday. We still want to vote on the Monday.” Now what you're doing is covering both of them, because you're giving the opportunity to the religious people to keep voting on the Monday, and for the ones who want to vote at the same time as they go to church, you give them the opportunity to vote on the Sunday.
Is there anything in your proposal that prevents these polling stations from being in church basements, or is part of the package that it has to be in a church basement?
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Van Loan Conservative York—Simcoe, ON
There has never been a requirement that it must or must not be in a church basement.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Van Loan Conservative York—Simcoe, ON
Under our legislation, that's a matter that would remain under the jurisdiction of Elections Canada officials.
I have some interesting statistics here. For ordinary polls, in 2004, 13% were in churches. In 2006, that went down to 12.3%. Actually, in advance polls there were 17% in churches in 2004, which went up to almost 19% in 2006. I think it says 18.8%.
So of the bulk of buildings, the main buildings chosen were community centres—
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Van Loan Conservative York—Simcoe, ON
—and education facilities.
I'm sorry, I thought I was answering your question.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Marcel Proulx Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
Thank you.
Why do you not have only the Monday or the Sunday as the voting day?
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Marcel Proulx Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
The week-end before is fine. The Sunday and the Monday are a problem.
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Marcel Proulx Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
The problem will be as far as manpower is concerned. I think Elections Canada will have a problem. As it is, for voting days it has to find all the secretaries and the returning officers. The hours are crazy. I'm not saying they should change the hours, but they have a problem finding the manpower.
Now there are going to be two consecutive days. Unless Elections Canada has sufficient funds from your government to increase the rates to these people and pay them very, very inviting salaries, it's simply going to double the problem of manpower. They can hardly cope with it now, to the point where in numerous ridings in Canada they have to run advertising in newspapers and local media to get people to fill these jobs.
So we have a major problem. Either you increase the funding of Elections Canada to just about double the salaries they're paying or you avoid people working in polls from having to declare these revenues as income tax.
There's a major problem that exists there, Minister.
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
Again, I apologize. I allowed that to go way over.
We'll get the Chief Electoral Officer in here as a witness. We can pose that question to the Chief Electoral Officer.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Marcel Proulx Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
The Chief Electoral Officer won't answer whether the government is going to give them more funding.
12:10 p.m.
An hon. member
He already said he would.
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
Jay Hill Conservative Prince George—Peace River, BC
Well, I can answer right now, Mr. Chairman, because the minister already answered it during that particular question. During an earlier round of questions from Monsieur Guimond, or maybe it was the very first round of questioning from Madame Robillard, he said, and I wrote it down, that there are upfront costs being calculated at $6.8 million and $30.4 million for each election thereafter for ongoing costs.