Obviously, the New Democratic Party of Canada will support all efforts to encourage greater voter turnout. This has always been an issue of the utmost importance for our party.
However, just like my colleague from the Liberal Party, we share Elections Canada's concerns, which were mentioned by Mr. Mayrand. We are concerned, for example, that ballot boxes may be moved about, by the time it's going to take to implement the proposed provisions, and about the cost involved. We are looking at a 12 % increase in the general election budget. There was consideration of the 35 days of polling, but at the end of the day, it is 30 days in total instead.
In any event, the current Elections Act provides for several polling possibilities. This is why the money should perhaps be used on awareness and to encourage people to use the other existing methods and polling days including the advance polling ballot and special ballots which may be sent at any point throughout the campaign right up to the Tuesday before polling day.
We also are concerned about staff recruitment. I'm not necessarily referring to recruiting people, because I think it will actually be easier to find people to work on Sunday than on Monday. Rather, the problem is with training. If the election staff all have different schedules, there may have to be ongoing training of a large number of people throughout the whole process.
On several occasions throughout any given polling day, local identification of people is a problem. Either people are poorly trained, or they've been trained but have their own personal spin on what they're supposed to do on polling day. The problem only gets bigger when different people turn up to do the same job.
Our job, as a political party, is to get people out to vote, and this is always going to be our goal. But the fact remains that some people are always going to be a little upset about getting calls on a Sunday morning or having to answer the door when people come and try and get them out to vote. As a political party, we're going to have to be very careful about that. So, with that in mind, I encourage you to not necessarily see Sunday as an ordinary polling day.
In closing, I think that Bill C-31, which was enacted during the last parliamentary session, could have included a focus on voter turnout. Had this been done, now that the act has been passed, we wouldn't be facing so many problems today.
Thank you.