I think the evidence is pretty consistent that there has been an increased demand for voting alternatives outside one-day regular voting opportunities. We see that in an increased demand for postal voting; we see it in an increased demand for advance voting. And we see more people taking advantage of those opportunities.
That is clearly something I think election administration officials and parliamentarians need to be aware of and take into account.
The challenge for you, I guess, is to understand when those arrangements are sufficient to address that demand. Canada's advance voting arrangements strike me as fairly generous at the moment, and larger numbers of Canadians are taking advantage of those opportunities.
Will larger numbers continue to take advantage if these are extended even further? I don't think we know the answer to that. I think we're all speculating a bit.
I'm not surprised at the estimates people have been bringing forward that the growth would likely be on the order of 1% or 2%. A 1% or 2% increase in voter turnout at a cost of $34 million strikes many people as a lot of money, so I can understand the second thoughts people are having, given the cost projections that Elections Canada provided.
More generally, is this a good way to address declining voter turnout? I think that was part of the question.
In answer to that, it's important to recognize that most of the research that's been done over the last 15 years or so has suggested that the group that has been most likely to see its voter participation drop off in the last generation has been young people. This administrative change is not designed for that group.
Are there ways of addressing declining youth voter turnout? I think so. I think there are lessons we can learn from other democracies. One of the major innovations I've been struck by is taken from the Australian context, in which the Australian Electoral Commission has introduced a so-called provisional voter register. What a provisional voter register allows people to do is register to vote at 16 or 17 years of age, and that change has introduced the idea of voter registration at a time when people are still in high school.
Introducing that kind of innovation, in which civic education and voter registration information can be addressed at a time when there is a very high participation rate in social studies classes, strikes me as something worth considering as well.