Thank you, Chair.
I have two points. I said originally I didn't want to get into debate on the merits of the bill, because I wanted to concentrate on the procedural aspects of it. I will ask for comment, perhaps, from some of the analysts on the propriety of the procedural change the opposition members are trying to enact.
But to clarify and to get my two cents' worth in on debate on the merits of the bill, I cannot agree with the position taken by the opposition members who have spoken and have said that the vast majority of people who came here said the Sunday prior to voting day is a bad idea. It's not what I heard at all.
At least Madame Robillard is making the argument advanced by the Elections Canada official, saying it would cost $34 million; that's a substantive argument. However, I would counter-argue, as evidenced by the testimony from Professor Ned Franks, who asked, what price democracy? He said it costs on average about an extra $150 to put that extra day in. Do you want to tell a constituent that he or she was denied the opportunity to vote for the sake of $150 because it was too much money? What is the price of democracy?
We heard consistently from experts—and I realize that these are opinions, since there's no empirical evidence yet, because we haven't had a Sunday prior to voting day.... All of the opinions of these experts said there's not going to be a substantive increase in voter turnout, in their opinion, but there probably will be one running anywhere from 1% to 4%, which is a significant number.
If the intent of this bill and the intent of the committee is to try to provide increased voter turnout, to get more people engaged in the democratic right to vote, then what are we arguing about here? It's clearly not a view advanced by members opposite saying that Sunday is going to be an infringement on the faith-based organizations. That's not true of all of them. Some of them said it would be an inconvenience, but others, such as the United Church, said clearly it wouldn't; they'd welcome it.
Mr. Reid made a very cogent argument in asking, what about other religious faiths? Are they going to be inconvenienced, and why are we only choosing the Christian faith that might be inconvenienced?
The crux of the bill is to try to do something that would actually increase voter turnout. Every single person who came here, except for the faith-based organizations, said that in their opinion it would. They said, pass the bill.
Maybe we can do other things that would increase voter turnout in other areas, but at least as a start, this is a pretty good idea. It may not increase the voter turnout by a whole bunch, but it will probably increase it. And isn't that what we're trying to do here? I thought we all agreed on this, that we were trying to bring a piece of legislation forward that would actually increase the number of people who would cast ballots.
Every single person who came forward, with the exception of the faith-based groups—and even they didn't question, I might add, Mr. Chair, whether or not voter turnout would increase.... They didn't even touch that argument; they just touched on the argument about how it would inconvenience them. But that's not the purpose of the bill. The purpose of the bill is not to talk about whether this is going to inconvenience Elections Canada in terms of having to hire extra staff, or whether it would cost Elections Canada more money, or whether it would inconvenience faith-based groups. The purpose of the bill was to try to do something that would increase voter turnout, and every person who offered an opinion on that said yes, in their opinion, this would increase voter turnout.
Now, if the bill were intended to increase voter turnout by 10%, then I would tend to start agreeing with some of our members opposite, because I haven't heard anybody say it would increase it by 10%. But it would increase it incrementally. Then, as I believe Professor Franks said, perhaps that would multiply over the years, because perhaps the Sunday voting would have a positive impact on young people, the demographic least likely to vote right now, and on their voting, and then, once they got in the habit of voting, they might continue the habit.
So for all of those arguments, which I'm just repeating here and was hoping my colleagues would recall, the opinions were that this bill and the Sunday, particularly, would increase voter turnout.
We have a procedural argument here. I believe your ruling was quite correct in ruling it out of order. But on the merits of the bill itself, what are we doing here? Why are we saying we want to scrap Sundays, when every single person who came before this committee said yes, I think—I don't know for sure, and we'll have to see, but I think—it will probably increase voter turnout? That was the intent of the bill.
Finally, then, I would ask if the clerks or the analysts would be prepared to offer an opinion on the appropriateness of the chair's ruling. I mean, is it, from a procedural standpoint? Or am I putting you in a conflict here? I don't want to do that, but I think I'm right when I make my procedural argument that this is out of scope.