At the moment, there are just over 2,000 churches that are used as voting places. So far, we have not exactly determined how many of them would be available for voting on Sunday. The preliminary information we have from people in the field indicates that we would have to expect that many of these churches would not be available on Sunday.
That said, we will have to look at other options. That is why one of our suggestions today is that the committee consider an amendment that would provide greater flexibility regarding the polling place. We think that in some cases, the two polling days could not be held in the same location. This further complicates the information we need to give voters, and could be a problem.
With respect to the safekeeping of ballot boxes, the bill in its current form is such that day 1 would be an advance polling day. At the moment, the deputy returning officers are responsible for safeguarding the ballot boxes on the advance polling day right up till the time the votes are counted. We raised this issue, because the proposed system would mean that the current number of deputy returning officers, 3,000, would increase to approximately 64,000. And they would be responsible for safeguarding the ballot boxes.
The other difficulty in this regard is the following. It could happen that a DRO would not be available on the following day, but because of the hours of work, we would have a little time to find the individual and recover the material. The fact is that Bill C-16 provides that in some locations, the vote will end at 8:00 p.m. and begin at 7:00 a.m. the following morning. This would leave very little time to recover the material, in the case of an incident. For purely operational reasons, we suggest that the committee consider an amendment that would provide for some flexibility in this regard. This discretion would be exercised in accordance with public instructions given to DROs and returning officers.