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

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

So it was one of the specific subsections of 167?

[Harry Mortimer]

Oh, I'm sorry, it's proposed subparagraph 167.2(a)(ii).

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Okay. And what is that repeating?

[Harry Mortimer]

Proposed subsection 176.1.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you.

Mr. Paquette, you have five minutes.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for your testimony. Here's my first question. A little earlier, the Chief Electoral Officer made a presentation. He mentioned there were 64,000 polling stations and that half of the names required to fill the electoral officer positions were provided by political parties, and that's a lot of people. Given this new constraint, that is being required to work two days in a row at a polling station, do you think you'll be able to increase and maintain staff levels, in other words the names that you'll be able to transfer? If half the staff come from political parties and if the political parties consider that it's going to cause some recruitment problems, it may also lead to recruitment problems for the Chief Electoral Officer. And at the end of the day, implementing a second polling day would not be possible. I'd like to hear your assessment of this issue.

[Éric Hébert-Daly]

Regarding the number of employees, perhaps I am not all that worried, as I said, because people who want to make both ends meet will often accept working on Sundays, whereas they may not accept to work on Mondays. I think that it might not be all that difficult.

Regarding volunteers, which means being able to provide a team for two consecutive election days, I feel more worried. However, this is a more general kind of problem; we are talking about volunteer work in a broader sense. I think that all political parties and all non-profit organizations have to deal with this. Given that Sunday is traditionally a day of rest, even if it is not for religious reasons, I think that it could cause a problem because of family obligations. Nevertheless, we need many people who are not employees of Elections Canada. We also need volunteers in other sectors for running the electoral machinery on Sundays. Clearly, we will have to discuss the scope of this problem.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Mortimer, have you any comments regarding this matter?

[Harry Mortimer]

Certainly, as a national party, we have a grand diversity of ridings with many different issues, and I think they'll all express concern about being able to get enough volunteers to cover all of the requirements for the poll. It's always a challenge for everybody, and it will be a concern if we move to more voting days.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

In a general way, the Chief Electoral Officer mentioned many challenges in his presentation, but he gave few solutions. The Chief Electoral Officer said that if the legislation was adopted, he would have to have some studies done before being able to implement the logistics required by the bill.

Do you not think that we are putting the cart before the horse? If our questions have not been answered, before adopting such legislation, should we not make sure that Elections Canada is able to provide the logistics required for implementing it? I am putting this question to both of you.

[Éric Hébert-Daly]

I entirely agree.

[Harry Mortimer]

Absolutely.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Monsieur Godin, did you want in on this round?

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

No, I thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

No? Thank you very much.

We're going to move to our third round, then, which is only going to be three minutes.

Mr. Preston is on the list.

Mr. Preston, three minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much.

We've all said at one point or another that we want to increase voter turnout. We're willing to do anything we can to do so, or at least anything within reason. Then the resistance-to-change animal comes out in us all and says yes, but not if it means changing things.

We say that the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting a different outcome. I don't think we can stay where we are and expect to get a greater voter turnout. It may only be anecdotal. We've asked for studies. We've said to study it some more. Well, we have a study here, and the Chief Electoral Officer says that the study itself can only be a guide towards where we might get, because until we do it, we won't know whether in fact we will change it or not.

We're all, in our own ridings, asking people why they didn't get out to vote. We are told that it's a time and place thing. They don't have the time. They're busy working. They're trying to spend time with their families.

We're going to give them the option of voting on a Sunday if they want, and if they don't, they can go on Monday or they can go over to Elections Canada. In the case of a large rural riding, it's not easy to get to the Elections Canada office and do a special ballot, even though it's available almost every day. So we're offering choices, and that's truly what this is about. It's about us agreeing that unless we step forward, we'll never get over that hump of declining voter turnout.

I also want to address very quickly that we continue to say that one of the other problems is a voters list that is just not accurate. We all agree that this is the case, and many of us spend a great deal of time trying to look at our voters lists. I think we picture this panacea of the old days when we used to go door to door and get an accurate voters list, and then they would post it on a telephone pole at the end of the street and you would be able to check it off. I'm not certain, under today's privacy rules, that this is truly what we want to do from an enumeration point of view. For those of you who are like me and do door-to-door, we are finding that very few people are at home anyway, so a door-to-door enumeration is maybe a panacea from the 50s that we think is a correction that's out there.

I'd like your comments on that enumeration thing, what we could do to fix that, and then certainly on why we are being resistant to opening up more opportunities for people to get out to vote.

[Harry Mortimer]

Our concern is not the issue of opening up more opportunities. It's the cost-benefit of it, and that's part of the reality we're looking at. Are we able to get that?

[Éric Hébert-Daly]

There is no question that there need to be changes to allow people to vote, and I don't actually believe that this particular change is that radical, to be quite honest with you. But it's not the radical nature that upsets me—and as a New Democrat, that shouldn't surprise you. I think it's more a question of what can be effective. The question is whether we have properly used the methods we have now at our disposal and advertised them properly. That, to me, is the piece, which we have at our disposal and doesn't require legislative change, that we haven't quite explored yet.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you.

That ends that round, and I have been looking at members who may have another question. There is a question, so with everybody's permission, we will try to get another round in.

You have two minutes this time, Mr. Reid, please.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

I've been chatting, Mr. Mortimer, with our researcher, and I think maybe your interpretation of subparagraph 167(2)(a)(ii) is incorrect. You have said that it replicates and is an unnecessary repetition of something that comes up in subsection 176(1). Subsection 176(1) states that “Every polling station established for polling day shall be open as an advance polling station on the day before polling day”. But subparagraph 167(2)(a)(ii) requires that the returning officer shall give notice in a prescribed form that sets out certain information, and one piece of information is “the name, if any, and the number of each of the polling divisions established for the day before polling day”.

I think those are two different things. One is saying that the station shall be open, and the second one is saying that the officer shall place a notice out for the public stating that the station is open. You can correct me if I've misinterpreted this, but I think, for that reason, that those actually are two different functions that need to be stated separately. Am I incorrect in that?

[Harry Mortimer]

I think the issue is more that day one voting is similar to the polling day and the information that is being put out there is the same. They're having that day one polling day and it's the same as voting day, and that would be the information that would be put out, rather than the information that's separate. In light of some of the discussions earlier today, this may not be as relevant.

We didn't think the requirement for the information is there for the returning officer to post, if they're only saying it's another polling day similar to voting day.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Well, you'd want to let people know that that's the case, that all polling stations are open for this particular advance poll. On some voting days only certain polls are open. On one of the advance poll days, all the stations are open. Presumably, that would be the information that one is required to state. I guess you could word it differently, but I don't think it's actually a redundancy per se. If you took this out, you'd have to put it in the law in some other form, I suspect.

[Harry Mortimer]

Individuals recognizing it as the same polling and the same day.