Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 15th, 2007

[Marc Mayrand]

Interestingly, without going into all the minutiae of it, there will be the list of electors and the bingo cards, and there are also some pretty detailed procedures as to how you secure the ballots.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

It will be a pretty full box in a lot of cases, but there is some other way for us to track whether the advance poll has worked for us.

If I might just say at the end, all we're looking at here is an increased choice for voters and an opportunity for people who might, in their busy lives, otherwise not have not gotten out to vote. This is a chance to go close to home, specifically in a rural riding where it's a long way from the elections office to their home. At least now there will be two days when the poll is open close to home. Other than that, they still have the same opportunities they ever had of driving into the elections office and voting on a special ballot or driving to the advance polls that are somewhat sprinkled around the riding but not as close to home. In fact, what we're offering with Bill C-16 is access to voters to actually get out and exercise their vote.

[Marc Mayrand]

Yes, absolutely.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

It sounds like a great idea.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much.

Madame Picard, five minutes, please.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Have you considered increasing the number of advance polls, rather than adding extra days, in order to increase voter turnout? Particularly in remote regions, rather than having just one polling station and rather than adding another day, why not encourage people to go out and vote by establishing more polling stations?

This is a problem. Some people travel quite far in order to vote. We need to take this fact into account. You are saying that it would cost three and a half million dollars to implement this plan. Rather than investing this money in adding one extra day, we could invest it as I suggest. We could also use the money to facilitate voter registration and correct the errors in the Register. Perhaps that would be more appropriate.

What do you think about that?

[Marc Mayrand]

At every election, in every riding, we exercise to determine how many advance polling places there will be. In the last election, the number of advance polling places increased by 20%. It depends on all sorts of geographic and demographic factors as well as the availability of staff, of course. However, we are taking the necessary steps to increase the number of polling stations and to ensure that these stations are located in places that are accessible to voters. Of course, this will never be like a full voting day.

Bill C-31, which has been passed, will also make it possible to do more in this regard. We can now use the returning officers a little more to get this preparatory work done. So that should give us a little more flexibility.

As regards the Register, Bill C-31 introduces some amendments that will come into force in December and particularly in March. They will definitely improve the Register and make the list much more reliable for the parties, entities and candidates.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

You estimated that it will cost approximately $3.5 million to implement the bill. However, have you estimated how much it will cost in total for a general election?

[Marc Mayrand]

Yes, the document clarifies that the implementation costs would be $3.5 million and that recurring costs, that is costs for each general election, would be about $34 million, namely about 12% of the election budget.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

The increase in the number of polling stations to accommodate advance voting, for instance, will result in more costs, right?

[Marc Mayrand]

Yes indeed, and that will be reflected in the budgets we prepare for a general election, a budget that we revise on an ongoing basis and which must be adjusted to reflect any changes made.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

We have one minute left if you want. You're good. Thank you very much.

We have five minutes, then, for Mr. Godin.

I have had requests from some colleagues for another round. If members are agreeable to that, we'll do a two-minute round after this one--two minutes, one quick question from each party.

Mr. Godin, you have five minutes.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Mayrand, you have proposed in this scenario for Sunday and Monday—and that is found as the second point on page 7 of your presentation—two different places in special cases.

Have you considered the fact that people may get mixed up and show up at the wrong place? Even Elections Canada sometimes makes mistakes. For example, in my region, the people from Allardville had to vote in Doney, and the people from Doney had to go to Allardville. You can just imagine all the fuss that that created on that day. So we are talking about two different polling stations indicated in a notice. Have you given any thought to what could happen?

[Marc Mayrand]

As I mentioned a little bit earlier, we will have to carry out a very solid information and awareness campaign with the electors. This is why I pointed out in my presentation that we needed time to prepare that. This is not the type of thing that you can implement quickly without running the risk of significant mistakes and confusion.

The changes that are proposed in the bill probably require a complete review of the electoral map. We are constantly adding new information to this map and it is becoming saturated. We therefore have to rethink what is for us one of the main tools that they use in order to inform electors of the times and locations where they can vote, and so on and so forth. This is a significant challenge, but I think that we can do this providing that we have enough time to deal with all of the issues at hand.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

I do not really see how we can get people to consult their agenda. It is simply going to be confusing. People are going to say that they showed up where they thought they were supposed to go, but that they were not at the right spot. In reality, we are talking about two locations for the same vote.

[Marc Mayrand]

First of all, I want to point out that this is not our preferred approach. We would prefer that it always be held at the same place, but we are thinking about possible exceptions that we will have to deal with. We will take action with respect to the information. Furthermore, I dare to hope—but we have not done any analysis on this matter—that these locations will not be far from each other.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

In some regions, the church is the only public place. In my riding, Acadie—Bathurst, we no longer set up polling stations in people's houses. We got rid of this practice. Now everything takes place in public, impartial places. We no longer report that one individual or another voted for a given candidate. We must not go backwards. I do not know what we are going to do, but this is the type of concern that I have.

[Marc Mayrand]

As I mentioned, slightly more than 2,000 polling stations are located in churches. We have to study each of these locations and determine whether in fact they are available on Sunday, if not we will have to find out what the other options are in each of the ridings.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Imagine the case where Parliament defeats Bill C-16. In order to improve voting—you do have this power, because this has not been voted on—you increase the number. As our friend Mr. Joe Preston said, there are 35 voting days. There are 35 days.

In order to allow people to vote closer to where they live—not everywhere in Canada but in specific locations—we could add advance polling stations that were closer to them.

I do not think that that would require any big changes and it is in your power to do this.

[Marc Mayrand]

Currently there are 3,000 advance polling stations. I do not think that I could increase this number to 60,000 by means of a simple administrative measure.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

No, but I am not suggesting that there be 60,000. Let's forget about Toronto and Montreal because we do not have this type of problem there. I am talking about rural areas, remote areas.

[Marc Mayrand]

Indeed, but as I was saying earlier, that's what we do at each election. We study each of the ridings, one by one, and we add stations in accordance with the demographic changes in the riding.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you.

[Marc Mayrand]

But I do not want to create expectations and give people the idea that it's like having a—