Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Dec. 11th, 2007

[Tina Bradford, Staff Representative, BC Government and Service Employees' Union]

My name is Tina Marie Bradford, and I'm a labour lawyer practising in British Columbia.

Until two years ago I was a resident of the riding of Vancouver East. This area of Vancouver struggles with poverty and the associated problems of substance addictions and mental illness.

For a number of years I have organized a group of volunteer lawyers to assist residents of this area to obtain sufficient identification to permit them to vote in the federal, provincial, and municipal elections.

Types of identification that are common to you and me are simply not available to the majority of the people living in this area. My experience with these individuals is that they have transient lifestyles similar to those of students or workers who are moving with work. I simply point this out, as I'm going to be speaking just in respect to my experiences with residents of the downtown eastside.

They often reside in rooming houses, hotels, or other forms of transient housing, such as shelters. They have difficulty obtaining government identification. If they do obtain it, personal belongings are often lost or stolen.

The types of identification that are easily obtainable for you and me, such as property tax notices, bank information, and credit card information, are simply not available to a number of people in this area, who are struggling simply to feed and clothe themselves.

The only types of identification they are able to scrape together, and which they try to use for voting on election day, are things such as welfare receipts, rent receipts, shelter receipts, and possibly court documentation.

A number of years ago, a group of Vancouver lawyers came together to try to help people vote in elections. We would set up tables in the downtown eastside and swear what's called a “statutory declaration” for them, which they could use as a piece of identification to take to the voting stations.

During the last few years, I've spent countless hours during the advance polls and all of election day swearing statutory declarations for these individuals. In the many hours I've spent in polling stations, I've seen first-hand many people turned away from polling stations because they did not have sufficient identification.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you, Ms. Bradford. I'm terribly sorry. We're going to have time for some questions after. I'm trying to keep the opening statements down a little bit.

Do you have a point of order, Mr. Lukiwski?

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

Yes. I didn't want to interrupt the witness, but I point back to your earliest observations about relevancy. We're dealing with Bill C-18, which merely states that anyone who has a non-civic address, if that same address appears in the voters list, should be allowed to vote. That's all we're talking about; it's a very simple bill.

The complexities the witnesses are bringing forward go far beyond what we're dealing with in Bill C-18. I think we have to come back to Bill C-18.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

My apologies. I'm getting the impression that maybe the witnesses weren't properly briefed as to what we are dealing with this morning. I think Mr. Lukiwski has summed it up pretty closely.

Did you have a point of order?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Chair, we're running through this like a kangaroo court. This bill is about the verification—

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Do you have a point of order?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Yes, I have a point of order. This issue is about the verification of residence. That's what the witness was giving testimony to. She only has two minutes. I don't believe we have to cut it down even further.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

I actually have allowed the witness two and a half minutes, although I appreciate what you're saying.

Mr. Quail, please.

[James, Jim) Quail (Executive Director, British Columbia Public Interest Advocacy Centre]

Last winter Mr. Kingsley predicted that some 5% of voters would have difficulty casting ballots because of Bill C-31. That estimate was extrapolated from the experience of urban voters in Toronto municipal elections. Some 14 million Canadians voted in the last general parliamentary election, so 5% of that number is about 700,000.

Bill C-18 addresses a different problem, that of rural voters without assigned civic street addresses. In the public discussion accompanying the introduction of Bill C-18, we heard estimates that about one million rural voters could be affected by this problem. That million voters is a different group from the 700,000 urban voters Mr. Kingsley has warned us about.

Bill C-18 would fix a part of the problem created by Bill C-31, but only a part of it. If a voter without a street address or a post office box collects mail from general delivery in the Spuzzum post office and brings a hydro bill to the polls as one of their documents, according to Bill C-18 they will now be able to vote. An identically situated voter who does not use general delivery will not be allowed to vote.

If anyone can explain how it furthers the cause of confirming voters' qualification to have people prove that they use a post office box or a general delivery slot in a post office, I would be fascinated to hear about it. There is a word for a rule that makes a distinction in voting rights based on that kind of scenario. In my respectful submission, that word is “silly”.

After Bill C-18 there would remain distinctions that are a lot worse than silly. Parliament will still have disenfranchised homeless people. It is a result akin to reintroducing the concept of a property qualification for elections. Bill C-18 does nothing to resolve any of the problems created by Bill C-31, except to assist some rural voters who would otherwise lose the ability to vote. They would still have to jump through all of the other hurdles put in place by Bill C-31.

The most sensible solution is to repeal all of the new voter documentation rules that were introduced by Bill C-31.

By the way, I filed a petition in the B.C. Supreme Court seeking that the court do that, but I would suggest that Parliament undertake it itself.

Alternatively, Parliament should provide for a declaration and a prescribed form, which would be available in all polling places, rural and urban, for voters to attest who they are. That would be a far better proof of entitlement to vote than the production of a utility bill or a driver's licence.

It is gratifying to see that Parliament has recognized that Bill C-31 was off target and is taking steps to resolve at least part of the problem. I hope you will complete that job and ensure that every Canadian citizen has an opportunity to exercise their democratic rights in the next election.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you, Mr. Quail.

Finally, please, Mr. Mollard.

[Murray Mollard, Executive Director, B.C. Civil Liberties Association]

Thank you.

My name is Murray Mollard. I'm a lawyer and the executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association in Vancouver.

We don't have very much time, and I'm going to keep my remarks very short. I have had the opportunity of appearing before a variety of committees in the time I've worked at the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, which is over 12 or 13 years now, and I've never had such short notice to be called as a witness as on this bill.

I am very concerned that this bill appears to be a very quick job, whereby Parliament is attempting to rectify a problem that was created by Bill C-31. We testified over a year ago, and we've been asked to testify again. I think the things we're wanting to say today, along with some of the other witnesses, are really about problems that we identified with Bill C-31 in the first place. There are various groups of voters who wish to vote and would like to vote but aren't going to be able to effectively vote because of the combination of Bill C-31...which really hasn't been rectified by Bill C-18.

I think for you as a parliamentary committee concerned with the issue of voting, the big question or the big concern we have heard with respect to the amendments to the Canada Elections Act is that there's a real concern about fraud. We still have to see any real evidence as to whether this fraud is a real problem or not, and certainly that is going to be an issue for us.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Excuse me, Mr. Mollard, please, I'm going to cut you off there.

I have to admit, Mr. Angus, that the patience of the chair is wearing thin. It appears to me that we have witnesses here who are quite content--and with all due respect to the witnesses, we certainly value the opinions you've expressed. In fact, I've heard them before. These are repeat performances of previous testimonies at this committee, and they're respected; they're appreciated by the committee. But at great expense to the taxpayers we have witnesses here who are debating another issue and--

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

A point of order, Mr. Chair. You certainly did hear this before, but you certainly didn't listen, did you? That's why we're back here now trying to rush this through.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

That's not a point of order; that's debate.

Could we have the microphone of the member shut off, please?

With all due respect to the witnesses, the issue turns out that we appreciate your being prepared for this committee. However, to help the committee do its work, we ask for testimony on specific subjects. Those subjects change from time to time as legislation comes before us, is passed, is modified, and so on. At that time we will invite you back again to help us make decisions on those.

We're not here today to solve the problems of the past. That bill was passed. We're here to talk about this verification of rural addresses.

I appreciate the witnesses' opening statements. We do have some time for questions. We'll open it for questions, but I will warn members that we're trying to get Bill C-18 through. We'll have all kinds of time for all these other issues. Let's not use every opportunity to run an agenda. Let's stick with Bill C-18. We'll be back on that agenda.

The first round of questions is seven minutes long. Are there any members who wish to speak to it?

Mr. Angus, seven minutes, please.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you.

Well, I find this a fascinating example of how dysfunctional this committee and this Parliament has been. Bill C-31 was a flawed bill; it was an embarrassing bill. This government has had to bring it back twice now to fix it. So C-18 is not simply a rural issue; it is a bill to address residential addresses.

We find we had this committee try to get this bill through without even asking any witnesses. They didn't want any recommendations as to why they had blown the bill so badly in the first place. So now we see this morning we have three parties that aren't even interested in asking any questions. I find this amazing, given the fact that one million rural voters were disenfranchised by this bill. Now we hear that 700,000 urban voters might not be able to vote, but that doesn't seem to have been an issue for anybody around this table.

I would like to say, for the record, that what I found in the pettiness and the myopic partisanship of this committee really speaks to what has happened with the voting bill. Bill C-31 was set up as a problem looking for a solution, a solution looking for a problem. Bill C-18 is an attempt to fix the mistakes that were made.

The other day, just to show you the extent of myopic views that we have on this committee, they wanted unanimous consent to get Bill C-18 through without any witnesses, without any discussion. I said we have to do due diligence. As legislators, our job is to do due diligence.

At the time, my good friend Mr. Lukiwski thanked me for not putting it through because he said it would give his party the opportunity to run 10% attack ads in Saskatchewan against the NDP. For what, I'm not sure. I suppose it's because we're doing our job.

So I'd like to begin my questioning.

Mr. Quail, you say that 700,000 urban residents will potentially not be able to vote because of this bill. Could you elaborate on that, because you are saying this is different from the one million voters whom this government has already booted out the door with their mistake?

[James (Jim) Quail]

Yes. This bill, C-18, and actually I thought I was addressing it in my comments, deals with fixing one of the problems that was created by Bill C-31, and that is the rural voters. That's a very serious problem, and as I said, it's good to see that Parliament is doing something to fix that bit. It's like a coat full of tatters and there's one big patch being put on it.

This does nothing, though, for the people whose problem is not that their address isn't a civic address; it doesn't deal with the problem of people who don't have an address. It doesn't deal with the problem of people who don't have documentation. I'm assuming that Parliament introduced this bill in order to fix the problems created by Bill C-31, and my advice to the committee is it fixes a part of the problem, but there's still a lot of work to do.

If the real concern is that there be adequate identification of voters, there's a simple solution that doesn't require 700,000 people. A whole host of circumstances are going to disenfranchise people: people who are homeless, seniors who no longer have driver's licences or other necessary identification, people who have moved recently and their identification doesn't square with their address.

We filed a very large body of evidence with our petition to the court, and I commend that to anybody who wants to study it in detail. There's a big problem still left behind in spite of this bill.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you for that.

The question now is.... I understand there is a legal challenge that is being brought forward against this bill. What are the bases of this challenge? Are we going to have to come before this committee next year with this same bunch and have them try to stick another bandage on the septic wound they've created?

[James (Jim) Quail]

Parliament has very limited constitutional authority to legislate in relation to voting. The Supreme Court of Canada has made it clear that section 3 of the Charter of Rights is one of the most absolute sections there is. It's immune from the notwithstanding clause, and unlike, say, freedom of speech, which you weigh against rights of other people, it has no countervailing rights. It's an absolute right, and there's a strict requirement for Parliament to justify anything that creates an obstacle to anybody voting.

I've read the report this committee filed in Parliament in June 2006, when the committee acknowledged it has no notion of the scale of voter fraud, if any. This is the material we're going to be bringing before the court, and I would suggest rather than the matter simply going ahead in one province, that Parliament fix the problem coast to coast.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

In your experience, do you believe there is enough legal precedence for your legal action to be brought forward? That would be the first part of the question.

The second part of the question is this. Given the testimony of Bill C-31, where these issues were clearly laid out, where witnesses and certainly members of the New Democratic Party laid out for the government what they would be facing, do you believe the simple lack of due diligence on the government's part is part of the reason they're following the same mistaken road once again?

[James (Jim) Quail]

It's certainly my view that we have a very powerful case. A decision by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2002 required the government to permit federal prisoners to vote, and we have documented the case. One of our petitioners in this matter was in and out of trouble in his previous life. He managed to straighten out his life. If he were still in trouble and not out of it and were still doing time in a penitentiary, he would be able to vote. He's homeless now in the downtown eastside, and his right to vote is in jeopardy.

I don't want to comment on the politics of motivation of the government. But in a legal context, this comes down to section 1 of the charter, where the government bears all the onus to show that anything it does that interferes with the right to vote is demonstrably justified, including the fact that the mechanism it puts together is proportionate to the problem. We have a mechanism that has affected 1.7 million people, and I hope for one million of them it will be resolved with this bill.

That's to address what? What is the problem? The report to the Commons by this committee said it really had no information about the scope of the problem. So talk about killing a gnat with an atom bomb. That's the way this is going to be presented to the court, and in my submission we have a very powerful argument to bring to the court.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you.

I'd like to ask Mr. Boyko—

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Your time is up, Mr. Angus, on that round.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I still have questions and I don't see anybody else bothering to step up, so I'd like to ask a few questions, if that's—

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

You might want to allow us to run from this end. And again, I want to caution you on relevance. It seems to me we're trying a case here on Bill C-31. I have concerns about sub judice convention.

The next round is five minutes.

Mr. Proulx.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Contrary to what my colleague, Mr. Angus, has said, it is not that the other parties are not interested. We gave Mr. Angus the opportunity to explain to us what the witnesses wanted to tell us. So I have a question for all the witnesses.

The first clause of Bill C-18 reads as follows:1. Section 143 of the Canada Elections Act is amended by adding the following after subsection (3):

If I may, Mr. Chairman, I will read the following clause in English because I want it to be understood.

So section 3.1 reads as follows:

If the address contained in the piece or pieces of identification provided under subsection (2) or paragraph (3)(a) does not prove the elector's residence but is consistent with information related to the elector that appears on the list of electors, the elector's residence is deemed to have been proven.

Correct me if I'm wrong, ladies and gentlemen, witnesses, but my understanding of Bill C-18 is that we are looking strictly at the situation whereby somebody who is already appearing on the list of electors has a problem voting because their pieces of identification do not necessarily correspond to what's on the electors list.

So you may be talking about people who are not on the electors list who would want to be on the electors list. But that's not the point of Bill C-18. I think you're knocking on the wrong door. I think Bill C-18 is strictly with regard to, and again I quote, the phrase “related to the elector that appears on the list of electors”.

So you would you please tell me how you can manage talking and wishing for something else?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.