Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 29th, 2007

[Prof. Jon Pammett]

I will comment on a couple of these items.

On the matter of when people make up their minds, the national election surveys have shown almost from the beginning that about a quarter of the people who vote claim to make up their minds on election day or very shortly before. Presumably, when the stimulus occurs, they will make a decision. This kind of last-minute decision-making will occur when they are there at the polls.

I don't think I have any comments on enumeration per se, since there's no change being proposed in this bill. Elections Canada certainly does a certain amount of what they call targeted enumerations to try to fill in these gaps, and I'm sure they will continue to do that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you, colleagues.

May I remind you to keep comments short and questions succinct? We're dealing, again, with advance polling opportunities versus enumerations, which is a great conversation. That is another bill we will be dealing with very shortly.

Monsieur Paquette is next for five minutes.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for your presentations.

Listening to your testimony, I observe that your conclusion is the same one reached by experts, university professors and people who have been studying Canadian politics for a long time whom we heard earlier.

In a document entitled "Potential Impacts of Extended Advance Voting on Voter Turnout", Mr. Blais and his colleagues concluded, and I quote, "We conclude that Bill C-55 is likely to increase voter turnout in Canada, but the magnitude of this effect is likely to be small."

You said yourself just now, in your presentation, "Will increasing the number of advance polling days actually increase voter turnout in Canada? Unfortunately, I'm not convinced it will."

So to date, no one is truly convinced that this will have a significant effect. In the study I referred to earlier, we were told by researchers that adding one advance polling day, it being an additional advance polling day we are talking about, the Sunday, would increase voter turnout for the election by about 200,000 votes and, once again, at a cost of $34 million. Obviously, I agree with you that you can't put a price on democracy, but it seems to me that this $34 million, as you said, could be put to better use.

I will put two things to you, since we do not have much time.

First, given that the studies are not conclusive, would it not be better to ask the Chief Electoral Officer to implement this measure in the next by-election, on an experimental basis, as a pilot project? The problem is not extending the hours at polling stations for the advance polls we already have, it is creating a polling day before election day. So would it not be preferable to do a few experiments in by-elections and draw a conclusion from them, based on a report that could be submitted to us? At that point, if the measure seems to have had a significant positive impact in terms of voter turnout, it could be implemented, rather than doing it right away and doing the studies later. That is what Mr. Mayrand said, in fact.

I am going to ask you one more question and then I will let you answer.

Because one of the problems, and you both referred to it, is turnout among young people, would it not be better simply to set up polling stations and revisal offices right in Canadian universities, where young people who are entitled to vote are?

So I asked you one question about a pilot project and another one about setting up polling stations in universities. Tell us your answers, because he is going to cut us off.

[David Docherty]

I don't think by-elections are a good test, in the sense that political parties put an awful lot of resources into by-elections, and they're targeted. If you look at the patterns of victories in by-elections versus victories in the subsequent elections or defeats by party, they're not necessarily the best test, so I would be a little bit cautious about reading things into that. Given the push that parties can have to pull out the vote during by-elections, they'll probably be making greater use of advance polls than they might during a general election. It's probably not a bad thing to do, but I would be very cautious about interpreting the results of that.

In terms of Canadian universities, I think Elections Canada is doing a very good job of trying to make it easier for students to vote. I think more could be done, but I think all those notions about.... Certainly the fixed election date may actually help a lot of that, because once we have fixed election dates, if they're during a school term, we can move ahead and look at ways that Elections Canada can start to spur the vote. I think some of that might be taken care of by the fixed election dates.

[Prof. Jon Pammett]

I don't think I have anything to add on this question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

I'm very impressed.

Monsieur Paquette, you have one minute left.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

No, that's fine.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

You're good? Thank you very much.

Mr. Angus, please, for five minutes.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you. Certainly the discussions we've been having on this bill have been very interesting, and they make us wonder if perhaps we should be writing a whole other bill here to deal with voting as opposed to strictly the issue at hand, because it has raised a lot of questions. We've received some answers and a general sense.

I think there is a general agreement that advance polling works, that people prefer it, that it is serving a number of needs out there for the change we've seen in our voting public. The question we keep coming back to is the element of changing what is not really an advance day but a full-out election day on the Sunday before, which would be a fairly dramatic change in how we have held voting in the past. Certainly there are questions culturally--a whole series of questions.

What we've heard from Elections Canada is that they figure the result of that will be a marginal change, if anything, given all the other opportunities to vote. Have either of you looked at the problems that would arise because elections are run with volunteers? Elections Canada has to find people out there. There is certainly anecdotal evidence that it would be problematic to be able to pull the vote full out for two straight days. Have you looked at this element and at whether or not that would be a problem?

[Prof. Jon Pammett]

No. I'm not quite sure how one would look into it. Elections Canada are the people who are in the best position to know whether they can get the proper personnel in place to run such a two-day event, and presumably what the added costs would be. I suppose the facilities are already established and are already provided for and rented. That would not be an added cost. It would be mostly personnel costs and personnel availability, but I don't know how one would actually research such a hypothetical future.

[David Docherty]

I would say the same as Jon. I don't have much more to add about that.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Right. The question that comes back--I know we're not really here talking about enumeration, but it was raised--is the question of how best to ensure bang for the buck. We're going to have a whole bunch of advance polls. It's going to grab a certain amount of the population who might not otherwise vote. We keep going back to young people and whether or not letting them vote full out on Sunday is going to dramatically increase that vote--I'd say that is highly questionable--and whether or not we should be putting that money into a voters list or enumeration, at least in universities, to try to engage young people to make sure they're on a list and that there has been contact. We keep coming back to the fact that young people aren't voting, but there does seem to be a real disconnect about how we're reaching them and how we're working with them. Can we actually go out there and say that if they can vote on Sunday, that's going to solve the problem? I don't think we can say that.

In your experience, do you think Sunday would have an effect either way on the youth vote?

[Prof. Jon Pammett]

Personally, I think it would have some effect, but I don't think any one of us is maintaining that this would have a dramatic effect or that it would solve the problem in some sense. It might be an incremental benefit. I don't think it needs to be an either/or situation. The other things that are mentioned about improving registration, improving access, more polling stations, all of these I think would help as well, but since this bill is directed at this particular suggestion, I am simply indicating that I personally think this would have some impact.

[David Docherty]

I agree. In the absence of any hard data, we can't make any definitive conclusions. I think it would improve things. How dramatically, I don't know. Certainly, at the risk of being on the record, if it's the youth we're after, we don't have to open the polling stations before noon on Sunday--

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[David Docherty]

--but I think opening on Sunday would help.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I have a final quick question. We had a fairly universal negative response from the church leaders who spoke, number one, for cultural, for faith reasons, but also because churches are locations for polling. I don't know what the numbers were--10% to 15% of our locations. They were pretty emphatic that this wasn't on, as far as they were concerned, on Sundays in their locations. Does this mean that we just cut them out of the picture altogether, or do we take that into account as something we have to factor into the balance when we're making this decision about full-out Sunday voting?

[Prof. Jon Pammett]

I take the point about the churches as polling places, but you have more access to schools, or better access to schools, on Sunday, and maybe that would be a trade-off that could operate.

[David Docherty]

I would agree. I think that's a concern.

The other concern is that if this does become a second full day of elections, then we have to think about media blackouts and pollings and all those other kinds of implications that follow along with it. When one can report polling results, and all those kinds of things, presumably would have to be backed up as well if this does become essentially a second full day of voting or a day before voting.

There's a whole series of other things. Polling locations is one, media blackouts, results of polls, and all those kinds of things have to be taken into consideration.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you, colleagues. That ends this round.

We're going to go to our next round. I'm going to try to hold it to three minutes. If you don't have a question, that's great.

I stand to be corrected, but I do believe the Chief Electoral Officer said there were 2,000 polls in churches out of 64,000 polling stations across Canada.

Madam Redman, you're up. If you can be as brief as you can, that would be great.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Am I splitting with Marcel?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

I'm going to give some leniency to this issue because I don't want to cut any questions off, but we do have another set of witnesses.

Madam Redman is first.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

On a point of order, is this the last round?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

It may have to be the last round.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I want to thank the witnesses for coming. I know specifically Dr. Docherty got stuck in an airport when he tried to do this last time.

I have three parts to my question, and I'll put them out quickly.

We were told that it would be about a $34 million cost. I agree with Dr. Docherty that you can't put a price on democracy. Having said that, I guess one of the challenges from where I sit is, is this the best use of that money given that the intention is for greater voter participation?

Most of us around this table have looked at the mandatory voting in Australia and the mandatory voter registration in New Zealand. One of the issues I don't think has been discussed enough, and it's a related issue to another bill, is a voter ID card universally.

I was wondering if you could briefly comment on those, as briefly as you choose to, as other ways that we may be able to encourage voter participation. I agree with you about the permanent list; I think there has to be something done about it.