No, I don't think it gets you around visual identification. Everyone is going to have to show their face. There will obviously not always be a match to identification, because as this committee learned when it examined the issue originally under Bill C-31, there's a significant part of the population that doesn't have government-issued identification with photographs. Hence, there's a more flexible regime, and the Chief Electoral Officer has come up with a very lengthy list of acceptable identification—some people say too lengthy a list—but everybody showing up at a polling station will be required to show their face. That will allow political party scrutineers to ensure that the same person doesn't show up at three polling stations to vote, or vote three times at same polling station, or to keep showing up for every family member who happens not to be interested in coming to exercise their vote.
Certainly that's always been one of the concerns about processes where the ballots all get mailed to the people's homes and then they vote for everybody in their family, mailing in the ballots. I once had a property where there was a municipal referendum, and although there was nobody actually resident at the household at that time, seven ballots for previous residents showed up there for people to vote. Anybody who wanted could have, in similar situations, voted many times. We don't want that kind of situation.
The rules on the books here are very different. If somebody is voting, for example, by mail-in ballot, the other option, we have the two exceptions. One is for the medical condition and the other one is by the mail-in ballot, and obviously you don't have to show it. But there, as I've indicated earlier, you have the application form, the requirements for identification being provided, the lengthy scrutinizing opportunity for the Elections Canada officials, the requirement for birthdate and for gender, and the requirement for the signature on the application form, which has to be compared to the signature on the identification that's provided. None of these are requirements for the day of voting where the visual identification is required.